


Something Wicked This Way Comes

by wickedgal08



Category: The Originals (TV), Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Eventual Smut, F/F, Femslash, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-01-02 23:46:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wickedgal08/pseuds/wickedgal08
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An elitist group of female vampire hunters face their biggest challenge when a dashing, but obnoxious, group of male vampires settle in town. Soon lies and deceit from within threatens to divide them, and a greater threat on the horizon may just end with bloodshed on an apocalyptic scale, and in the midst of all this beats the heart of a love between two women whose sudden and intense romance may be their undoing. Beklena.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pushed To The Limit

 

"You don't scare me," sneered the voice of former reporter Logan Fell, his features flushed as he knelt on the ground, his back arched slightly due to the immense pain it caused him just to straighten up because of all the wooden bullets which lined his stomach.

The blonde he was being interrogated by merely smirked, lifting up a foot before aiming a well executed kick to his chest, which sent him backwards, a howl of pain flying past his lips. Blood red lipstick, usually reserved for the odd night out, yet on this occasion used to make herself appear as a force to be reckoned with, coated her lips, which occasionally drew back to reveal an array of pearl white teeth.

"Well," she murmured, leaning in, practically tasting the loathing radiating from his skin. "I guess that makes you the biggest idiot in the world." She drew back, glaring at him. "Who turned you?" His silence infuriated her. "Oh come on, Fell. We grew up in the same town, a town that used to be vampire free, and I'm expected to believe you woke up one day sporting fangs and a new dietary requirement? Who turned you?"

"Does your mommy know what you are?" Logan spat, wearing a disdainful expression. "A hunter? I'm sure the Liz I remember wouldn't want her precious daughter mixed up in council business... or are you unaware Mystic Falls has a secret council designed to do 'your job'?"

"My mom is none of your concern." Caroline Forbes, on the cusp of twenty two years of age, aimed another kick in his direction, retrieving a stake from her pocket, poising it over his heart. "But I'll tell her you were thinking about her."

Logan snarled and lunged for her neck, fangs bared, but something shot past her face, knocking him backwards. He lay there for a moment, stunned, until something dug sharply into his chest, aligning with his heart perfectly before it was stopped forever, his skin immediately shrivelling away, now an ash grey in colour, his mouth slack from the sheer surprise he'd felt at having someone he'd grown up with (rightfully) managing to take him down.

Caroline stared at him, momentarily reflecting on the few memories she'd shared with him. He'd offered her lifts to the news station where he'd worked as a local news reporter when she'd been doing her work experience, helped her dig out facts from the archives when she'd been doing a school project, and generally just been one of those faces you couldn't help but know. She wasn't sure how she felt about his death, and he'd given her next to no answers regarding the mystery over who'd turned him – which meant there was probably another vampire out there somewhere, hiding in the shadows like a coward – but he was gone, and the job – for the moment - was done.

She turned, noting her accomplices, one bearing a crossbow, the other a handgun loaded with vervain laced bullets, and gave a frustrated sigh, pushing her lips into a scowl as she appraised her companions with exasperation.

"Gee, you guys sure took your time stepping in! What took you so long?" she complained.

"Logan Fell was a wild card. We all grew up with him. It was just a matter of who got to him first in regards to who killed him. You were doing okay on your own."

Caroline stared critically at her friends, who she'd known her entire life, and gave an exaggerated sigh.

To sum her friends up in a nutshell, they were both maddeningly unhelpful at times, but solid players on the hunting field. You had one brunette with baby pink lips and olive skin to die for, whose only solid flaw seemed to be the fact she had no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, at least not while her friends' lives were at stake. She was a born again martyr from three centuries ago, and, while it was admirable to a degree, Caroline could count on both hands (and then some) the amount of times she'd had to stop Elena from sacrificing herself (because for some strange reason a lot of vampires fixated on Elena, and nobody could really figure out why) to save her friends by putting herself in the line of fire.

Bonnie Bennett really was no better on the self-preservation front. A petite, dark skinned, curly haired beauty - the youngest of the group, but by no means the weakest - she was undoubtedly the most intelligent of the bunch, always digging up fresh research about the vampires they hunted, always finding that there was something new to learn, a new method of attack they hadn't tried yet.

Caroline couldn't really put a label on herself, much as she tried. She just knew she was physically strong, capable of manipulation, capable of charming a vampire into thinking he was getting a free meal for the evening, and then would drive a stake into his heart before he had even seen the flirtatious look in her eyes change into something cold and ruthless. She liked to think she was pretty, with her vivid blonde hair and blue eyes, but she tended to overcompensate for what was already there, mostly by trying too damn hard with any guy she had the chance to date. Most ran the other way because she was, and this was a direct quote here, "too intense". Bonnie and Elena had frequently assured her one day she'd find a man who'd be able to keep up with her, but she had her doubts, and it wasn't like in their business dating was a pastime they could keep up with, yet still she pined for love because it was the only cliché about being a woman she could claim.

"Rebekah ran you ragged again huh?" she quizzed, noting the exhausted look in her friends' eyes.

"Training blows," Elena, the brunette, stated, pushing back her hair to reveal her glossy brow. "But Rebekah says physical fitness is what saves our lives."

"What makes her such an expert on such matters? She literally only joined our group six months ago."

"She saved our asses in New York, Care," Bonnie reminded her. "That nest of vampires outnumbered us and she took them all out single-handedly."

"Yeah, well, call me crazy, but that woman is something else," Caroline grumbled.

"You're only saying that because you don't know her," Bonnie pointed out. "She's actually pretty cool."

"But we are the Dynamic Trio," Caroline whined. "Somehow the Dynamic Quad doesn't sound nearly as good. We've done everything together since we were in diapers. She doesn't get to just come in and mess that up."

Bonnie smiled.

"Don't be bitter – it provokes wrinkles," she scolded lightly.

"You gotta admit though, Care, she does know her stuff when it comes to taking down a vampire," Elena added. "She's strong, knows all their weak spots, has a ridiculous assortment of weaponry I don't know how she acquired, and she throws a mean right hook." In explanation to the strange looks she got from Bonnie and Caroline, she added, "Kind of got on the wrong side of her when we first met. Called her a stuck up hunter wannabe, and then my face was on the end of her fist." She grinned. "My fault really..."

Caroline pulled a face.

"Any news on any vampires?" she asked, changing the subject abruptly. "I'm still feeling pumped from taking out Logan."

"Easy, Lara Croft," Bonnie teased. "Let's take the day to recuperate, and I'll go scout out what I can. Got a contact who never fails to dig up some vampires."

"Is this the guy who refuses to give you his name?"

"I made some progress in that department actually. I got a last name – Singer."

"Singer?" Caroline wrinkled her nose with distaste. "Sounds like you got fake named."

Bonnie shrugged, dropping the matter.

"Who's going to take care of Logan?" Elena asked, motioning towards the body.

"I'll do it," Caroline offered, despite the fact disposing of bodies was inherently the worst part of this whole business for her.

"Need any help?"

"Nah, should be okay."

"I'll start seeing if he turned anyone, although from the looks of things he'd probably only just turned himself. The clumsy trail of bodies he left indicates newborn vampire, and he wasn't exactly eager to volunteer answers as to who might've turned him, so that leads us back to square one," Bonnie informed them.

"I'll continue my training with Rebekah," Elena said, "seeing how I've been out of shape since that vampire in Toronto nearly gutted me." She lifted up her tank top, revealing a scar which ran down her stomach, still raw around the fringes, but otherwise a perfect example of where carelessness could get you. "Really wish we'd known then that vervain bullets could slow the bastards down."

"To be fair, though, we had just started out," Bonnie reasoned. "I mean, I got cocky a couple of times – nearly lost an ear because of it."

"And I nearly ruined a perfect manicure because some plaid wearing creep decided that picking on blondes was his new hobby," Caroline growled, bristling at the memory. "We've all suffered because we thought this would be easy. Stake a few vampires, rid the world of a few monsters... then go shopping and do it all again the next day. It's harder than we thought. The bastards are getting craftier."

The other two nodded, interrupted by the sound of heels as a stunning blonde woman entered the vicinity, the way she walked a good indicator of who she was as a person: confident, self-assured, with a little bit of an edge.

She was undoubtedly beautiful, with her hair currently tied up in a messy ponytail, her eyes a deep green you found yourself falling into, as if they were miniature oceans dragging you under time and time again. Her fashion, even Caroline admitted on a regular basis, was flawless, and right now she wore stylish skinny jeans, accompanied by a loose fitting white top, which rippled around the collar area, finished off with some dark leather boots which cut off just below her knees.

"It took you seven hours to find and track a newbie vampire?" she asked incredulously, raising a lone eyebrow. "Seriously? I could've tracked him, stake him, and mounted him on my wall within an hour."

"That's because you seem to possess supernatural skills that we don't," Caroline fired back, instantly irritated. "We've known Logan all our lives, so excuse us for wanting to make absolutely sure he was a vampire. Where's your compassion?"

"Compassion is the enemy of a hunter, Caroline," Rebekah retorted. "Even if it's your loved one, you have to abandon your emotions and do the right thing. The moment you become a vampire hunter, you're signing your compassion away, or do I need to spell it out for you?"

"Easy, Rebekah," Elena cautioned, always the middle woman when things between Rebekah and Caroline got too heated, which they did on numerous occasions given the fact they were both stubborn women with their own way of tackling situations. "You taught us to be absolutely sure before we attacked; that's what we were doing. All signs pointed to Logan, but we waited to see if he led us to his sire, or a nest of vampires. That's basic protocol."

Caroline flashed Elena a grateful look, but Rebekah still looked dubious.

"Uncertainty can end your lives," she drawled. "So while I admire the Nancy Drew-ness of it all, I do expect my training to have at least sharpened your minds – a pipe dream, at this point, but maybe my expectations of you were too high..."

"How very dare you, "Caroline began, instantly furious, but Bonnie dragged her away before they could engage in a full on catfight, leaving Elena and Rebekah alone.

Rebekah shook her head, evidently displeased with the day's events.

"You could go easier on us you know," Elena suggested, running a hand through her hair in frustration. "We've all lost people because of the vampires. Nobody wants to take them down more than we do. But they're getting smarter, you have to admit that!"

"That's because you're making yourselves widely known in the vampire community. You kill them in open places, where anybody could walk by and see. It's reckless. Vampires might be solitary for the most part, but it doesn't mean they don't talk. The word soon gets round. I wouldn't be surprised if you three have your own wanted posters in the vampire community at this point."

Elena glared at her.

"We're trying our best here, Rebekah. Give us some credit. Why do you insist on pushing us so damn hard?"

Rebekah pursed her lips, assessing her coldly before her mask dropped, revealing a weary woman in her early twenties who had seen everything the world had to offer – good and bad – and who'd begun to grow exhausted with life as a result.

"Because I know what it's like to lose someone to a supernatural creature of superior strength," she admitted. "My youngest brother was killed by a werewolf pack we once called neighbours. He never saw the attack coming. That's why I'm pushing you so damn hard: because I know what it's like to believe the best in people only for them to end up betraying you. If you shortlist the people you can trust, sifting out the people you know for sure with the potential to betray you, you have a better chance of surviving, take it from me."

Her nostrils flared as she ranted, her eyes flashing with fire one moment, the flames soon doused with an ice cold barrier nothing could penetrate, and it was then Elena realised Rebekah wasn't this cold on purpose; life had just moulded her into this distrustful, paranoid, vengeful woman intent on slaying anything demonic to secure some peace of mind for herself.

Elena could relate to that.

"How old was he?" she couldn't help but ask.

"About nine years old...maybe ten." Rebekah pinched the ridge of her nose, suddenly looking exhausted. "I forget because it feels like it happened a thousand years ago."

"You never talk about yourself," Elena noted. "You just kind of...swept into our lives."

Rebekah chuckled, but the sound was harsh, flat.

"I have good reason for keeping my distance. I know what it's like to trust and then be stabbed in the back," she said. "People earn my trust, I let them in, and then they're gone when the moment really counts. I've learned over the years to trust nobody but myself." She gave Elena a small smile. "It's easier that way."

"It might be easier, but it sounds lonely."

"I'd rather be lonely in the long run than ending up with a metaphorical dagger in my back once again because I let my heart rule my head. "One of my other brothers used to say that would be my downfall, my romantic heart."

"I thought we were talking about people in general... not men."

"Men... women..." Rebekah threw her hands up in the air. "Sexuality isn't black and white. It's a spectrum of colours which simply blend into one another. Truth is, I went to college... experimented a little, as one does..." she laughed, and this time it sounded genuine, free even, "...but it doesn't matter who I hand my heart out to, it always gets broken."

"If it helps, I know how you feel," Elena offered, wondering how she and Rebekah had suddenly become stuck with removing Logan's body.

"Your story can't be more tragic than mine – trust me."

"You want to see which of our lives is more tragic? Okay, boyfriend one – Matt; we were boyfriend and girlfriend in high school – cheerleader and jock – the perfect, most clichéd couple you can ever image. The unofficial story of how we broke up – the one we told everyone – was that we just wanted different things. I guess in a way that wasn't a lie. I caught him cheating, and he broke my heart. In fact, since then, every boyfriend I have ever had, and there have been a fair few – not quite in the double digits however – found a reason to look for love elsewhere, without telling me that's what we were doing."

Rebekah's permanent glare softened a fraction.

"And yet Caroline tells me you're still hoping to find Mr Right? How do you actively keep on looking for love, even after being betrayed all those times?"

"I choose to believe in the best of people...even if people make it hard for me to believe in the best of me sometimes," Elena confessed, shrugging her shoulders. "You think I'm crazy, don't you?"

"No..." Rebekah gave her a half smile. "You're exactly who I was the second to last time I fell in love – vaguely hopeful that the next time I fell in love, it would be the last." She cleared her throat, a cold mask frosting her features. "Anyway, enough with the sentiment... it's useless here." She gave Logan's body a swift kick. "Since Caroline – yet again – has left us to do all the work, we'll have to dispose of this creep before people show up." She gave Elena an impatient look. "Well? Stop gawking and lend a hand."

Elena shook her head, biting back an equally as impatient retort, wondering if it was too late to take back the compliments she'd given Rebekah earlier in favour of some much more realistic truths that captured Rebekah's character far more truthfully.

X

It was three weeks until her seventeenth birthday, so not exactly a milestone but regardless Elena was looking forward to it. Caroline was throwing her the be-all-end-all parties, insisting each party had to top the last, and that was, apparently, her one and only rule regarding celebrations.

Of course, Matt had been violently scribbled off the list, and there had been constant amendments to the invite list due to Caroline's tendencies to fall out with a different person every other day it seemed, but Elena was excited by the prospect of getting to celebrate with her friends. She was a party animal, she had to admit it, and didn't so much enjoy the social aspect of it so much as the dancing, the mindless gyrating against boys, giving teasing snippets of what she could give them before moving on to the next, the night always ending with her, Bonnie and Caroline giggling madly on the floor, usually a little bit drunk if it was a house party. Public events usually had them in a booth somewhere, exchanging notes on their guests, recapping the night with wide smiles and loud laughs.

Right now, she was enjoying a going-back-to-school party, as everyone caught up with the latest scandals and heartbreaks Mystic Falls had to offer, and Caroline was chatting with Tyler, some undeniable sparks passing between them despite their less than amicable relationship due to the fact he – quite rightly – had Matt's back in regards to his and Elena's break up. She wasn't going to blame him for sticking up for his friend, especially when she'd heard down the grapevine he'd actually berated him for it before letting the matter drop.

"Elena," came a familiar voice, and she closed her eyes, wondering whether actually thinking about him had actually caused him to be conjured up before her.

"Go away, Matt," she implored, before attempting to walk away.

He effortlessly blocked her, his eyes pleading her to listen, and she stood there, both angry and heartbroken, wondering how the atypical good guy could do the atypical guy thing and believe he could have his cake and eat it too, and actually believe he could get away with it.

"I just need to say I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "I was an ass..."

"Yes...you were."

"And I broke your heart."

"Yes, you did."

Matt closed his eyes painfully. "I screwed up."

"Gee, you think?" she snapped, before reigning in the worst of her temper as she appraised him coldly. "Look, Matt, apologies when it comes to matters of the heart only get you so far. You can say you're sorry a thousand times, and mean it every single time, but it doesn't matter. You can't un-cheat. You can't buy back my trust with a single word. It's gonna take time."

"Time? How much time?"

She shrugged. "It'll take as long as it takes. But maybe we were wrong for each other. You had the future mapped out for us – a future you obviously weren't thinking about when you had your tongue shoved down Aimee Bradley's throat – and I - I don't want my future mapped out for me. I want to live my life and figure out all that kind of stuff along the way."

Matt opened his mouth, but she was done listening. Any terminated relationship – romantic or otherwise – had a bank of so many minutes you could tolerate the other person before you had to cut yourself off, and this was her moment.

She made a half hearted excuse that she had to head home for family night (which wasn't strictly a lie, she just was technically missing out on it to come to this party), and yet, tempted to go home and just wallow, Elena called her mom, asking her to come and fetch her.

While she waited, she felt like a pair of eyes happened to be watching her, but she shook off that feeling, hovering by the side of a lonely road a few minutes away from where the party happened to be.

Her whole world stopped at the sound of piercing screams, and before she knew it she'd barrelled forwards, pushing herself into a run, freezing at the sight before her, recognising her parents' car, which had collided with a tree, but that wasn't what had her entire body shaking with fear.

Both her parents were strewn on the ground, her dad unconscious, but she couldn't see the rise and fall of his chest to indicate he was breathing, half of his neck savaged by what appeared to be bite marks. Her mom was attempting to fight off a dark haired individual, who had plunged his teeth into her neck and appeared to be draining her.

Before she could stop it, a horrifying shriek escaped Elena's lips, which naturally caught the attention of her mom's attacker, who paused, dropping his prey to the ground, his mouth covered with blood, grinning broadly as he advanced towards her.

It was like a horror movie, except there was no control to turn off the television when things became too scary to deal with. Elena couldn't physically move; terror rooted her to the ground, but even through the paralysing fear, her brain managed to coax a little movement out of her as she took a step back. The beast before her – there was no other word to describe him, because monster seemed too vague a word – snarled, the motion revealing a set of bloodstained teeth, and then suddenly froze, taking in her appearance with almost a confused air. It was in that moment that Elena almost saw a civil air to this beast, this unnameable fear (if she gave it a name, her mind theorised, it only became real, even though she was pretty sure she knew what he was anyway), and then that moment disappeared as he blurred towards her, grabbed her head and locked his eyes on hers.

The rest, as they say, was history, and yet ironically Elena would never forget the first time she was compelled.

The memory was eventually forced back into her head, during an incident which fuelled her anger towards vampires, and awoke the burning desire to slay them all, but up until that point she, like the rest of the world, believed her parents' deaths to have been the result of a tragic car accident.

When she eventually found out, Elena couldn't work out which was the worst fate to have gone through: believing a lie for so many years, or knowing the truth and being (at the time) powerless to do anything about it. The truth, no matter how horrific it might be, is always easier to deal with than a lie; a lie might placate, soothe and/or comfort, but in the end it's the equivalent of burying something in the earth; sooner or later, it's bound to surface in some shape or form.

The way Elena found out the truth was nothing short of horrific, but in the end it taught her one thing: she was strong, and life could throw every obstacle, every hurt her way, and she could still cope.

But that night still damaged her, regardless of what she did or did not remember, and she remembered it as such as the night that everything changed.

X

"Keep 'em coming," Elena ordered the bartender, in reference to the vodka shots she was currently necking back fast and furiously.

"So this is how you wind down after a hard day's work," Rebekah drawled, sliding into the stool next to her. "Interesting, although rather clichéd for my liking."

"It's just something I do, okay?" Elena said churlishly. "It's a ritual at this point."

"Why?"

Elena scrutinised her, then shook her head.

"You're not ready."

"Ready for what?"

"When we know each other a little better, remind me of this conversation – because I certainly won't remember – and then I'll tell you."

Rebekah rolled her eyes, something Elena didn't miss, even as her sobriety gradually started to disappear, shot by shot.

After a shower, followed by a subsequent bath – another ritual Elena kept to herself, with another equally good story behind it – she'd changed into a dark, tight fitting shirt, matched with jeans which had seen better days, and ankle boots. It wasn't exactly a going-out outfit, but she felt comfortable in it, and it helped shed the hunter identity for the night, so she could pass off as a reasonably normal individual pursuing normal activities.

Activities which, unfortunately, included eye stalking her ex-boyfriend, who happened to work in the Grill, and happened to look surprisingly good with a towel slung haphazardly across his shoulder.

"Which boyfriend do you happen to be eye stalking right now?" Rebekah asked intuitively.

"Number one," Elena grumbled, holding up one finger as if Rebekah needed a visual representation of the number. "Matt Donovan – everyone's golden boy."

"Does he know you come here and check him out, not too subtly I might add?"

Elena shook her head fervently.

"Even though we broke up under horrible circumstances, we sort of parted ways amicably... which makes no sense, I know, but I don't do drama, or confrontation. I don't like the idea that someone out there might have a reason to dislike, hate or otherwise feel negatively about me."

"Well, that's stupid. You can't control what people think of you, Elena."

Elena gave her a cross look.

"I know that. But then again I can control the way I act around people." She gulped down another vodka shot, the slur in her voice become more and more pronounced as the evening went on. "Caroline doesn't trust you, you know."

"She's made that perfectly clear," Rebekah replied wryly. "The girl can't show an ounce of tact or subtlety, which is fine. I'm used to being the girl nobody trusts."

"I trust you," Elena announced, resting her hand comfortably on top of Rebekah's, aware the action sent a series of unexplainable tingles running up and down her arm, producing goosebumps as a results.

"The fact I've earned the trust of a semi-alcoholic suddenly makes my life worthwhile," Rebekah sniped, but a genuine smile, tinged with humour, couldn't help but make its way to the surface.

"Alcohol is so gooood," Elena declared giddily, and it was at that point Rebekah decided to intervene.

"Okay, Drunkie Drunkerson – we're taking you home," she announced, looping an arm around her, "I'm cutting you off."

"Why?" Elena whined, but she made no physical gesture of protestation, merely allowing Rebekah to lead her out of the bar.

"Because alcohol leads you into making stupid decisions, and lest you forget, we have early morning training tomorrow."

"How early is early?"

"Six a.m. sharp," Rebekah said, eyeing her warily. "Although I suspect we might have to push that up to eight, given the fact you're going to wake up with a bitching headache, and a temper which somehow manages to make me seem like the most patient and understanding person in the world."

Elena made a noncommittal sound, merely staggering along, even in her flat ankle boots, as she clung to Rebekah like a lifeline, which amused the latter to no end, given the fact that this encounter, though far from what she'd hoped for, was the embodiment of someone trusting her. It felt good, though she kept herself from keeping too involved with Elena and her little gang, given the fact she liked to move from place to place, never sticking around long enough to call a place home. It was sad, but that was her truth.

"Bet ya wondering why I get hammered so often, right?" Elena slurred, still able to form complete sentences, even if they were fragmented by the odd hiccup.

"Everyone who turns to alcohol for their solution might claim to have different reasons for doing so, but there's always one common underlying reason why they do – to forget. Everyone always has something they want to forget when they drink, whether it's stress, heartache, or a rough day at work – sometimes all three," Rebekah replied curtly. "You're past the point of sober return right now, Elena, so don't try and make me your designated driver every time you want to forget the horrors you've faced that particular day. I don't do friends, and I don't do chauffeuring, okay?"

Elena gave her what she supposed to be a glare, but it looked like she was squinting instead, which ruined the effect she was going for.

"You don't know anything about me," she said snippily, hiccupping loudly. "I don't drink to getfor – f-forget..." she paused, "...whatever. S'hard word to say."

Rebekah gave her an icy stare.

"We're not close, Elena, but don't ever lie to me. You don't want to tell me what it is you're trying to forget, fine, but don't try and make out you're different than everyone else who clings to a bar stool and orders shot after shot. You're trying to erase something – hurt, pain, grief, whatever – so don't try and treat me like I don't get it."

But her words were lost on Elena, whose eyes glazed over, and as Rebekah steered her towards her car, she began to wonder what she'd gotten herself into with this rag tag bunch of girls, whose motivations for doing what they did were a mystery. She knew something had to have happened in each of these girls' lives which had motivated them into becoming hunters, a loss of some kind, but they weren't sharing, and she wasn't asking. You didn't get too personal with these hunters; you often found they tended to have a lot of baggage, a lot of drama, and Rebekah wasn't here for that.

All the same, she couldn't help but muse on Elena, who was an enigma as well as being very easy on the eyes. Just what was it that had her reaching for a bottle of liquor after every hunt – she'd noticed the pattern, hence the solo intervention, although she'd not really done any intervening – always reaching the point of complete and utter intoxication before ending up in her car, sleeping the alcohol off in the back seat? What was it about this girl that had her instantly intrigued, when up until this point she'd made a point to remain firmly detached from the clique Elena and her friends had formed since childhood, in an effort to remain drama-free?

Rebekah had typically been drawn to men, and not just ordinary men: men who tended to thirst for power, or who had been particularly charismatic, and the women she'd loved and lost had tended to be both outspoken and, frankly, overemotional. She couldn't cope with the extremes both genders presented, and Elena was kind of a weird combination of both – charismatic, with the tendency to appear vulnerable, and she found that oddly appealing.

She shook her head, dismissing these thoughts before they had time to root themselves into her subconscious.

Don't let yourself fall again, her heart cautioned. You won't always be able to pick yourself up.

Baby steps, her head, remarkably, agreed. Just be cautious. It won't kill you to just be careful.

Rebekah glanced at Elena, who slumped in the passenger seat, who was attempting to hide tears she must've been hoping her companion couldn't see.

Out of courtesy, she looked away, suddenly feeling uncomfortable.

I really can't become this girl's confidante, she thought. Nothing good could come from being her friend.

And with this thought, she started the car up, and decided to drop off Elena and then to backpedal to the bar so she could drown these strange thoughts in alcohol.


	2. Edge of Insanity

 

Elena was acutely aware as she was training that she probably would've been better off sticking with the cheerleading.

Running across a weathered down track in the woods she'd grown up in, her hair tied back into a tight ponytail, she tried to ignore the bleating sounds of Rebekah yelling at her as she ran alongside her, keeping pace perfectly. Sometimes it would be just general tips she'd shout, like 'move faster', or 'keep your bloody arms tucked in, it's not hard for god's sake!' (sometimes she would contradict her orders just to make her life harder), and sometimes it would just be general insults to get her blood boiling to the point where the only way to blow off steam was to run it off.

Rebekah's fitness regime was usually carefully planned out, designed to test and improve the skills they needed to survive in a supernatural infested world. She would start the girls off with some basic running exercises – and by basic, this usually involved her chucking them out of her car after dropping them off in some remote location and barking at them through a megaphone for them to run as if an enemy was chasing them – and then would dedicate a good portion of the day to honing their fighting techniques. Elena was typically a charge-and-stab type of fighter, whereas Bonnie was more tactical and tried to plan out her attacks in advance, and as for Caroline, she was a combination of both – impulsive, but otherwise methodical.

As she ran, Elena couldn't help but think about the days spent combing these woods for her friends as they'd played the craziest games of hide-and-seek ever. Matt had been the worst hider, always choosing the same tree to crouch behind, and Caroline had always insisted on choosing the places which wouldn't mess up her hair or clothes, but had always ended up being tackled by her former boyfriend Tyler to the ground whenever he'd been the seeker and "found" her, so her aforementioned desires were always rendered moot. Those days seemed like a lifetime ago, yet she could still remember them with a startling vividness.

"Eyes ahead! Focus!" Rebekah barked in her ear.

"I'm running as fast as I can!" Elena wheezed furiously.

With a sigh, Rebekah gave her a heated look and then pushed herself into a faster run so that she was now ahead of her.

"Not fast enough evidently!" she mocked. "Vampires have the element of speed, Elena. No one's asking you to try and outrun them, but you need to be prepared for the possibility that you might have to outsmart them."

"How did you get so fast exactly?!"

"Isn't it obvious?" Rebekah gave her a disarming smile. "I'm secretly a vampire."

Even in mid-run, Elena managed to get out a derisive snort.

"You are many things, Rebekah, but a monster you are not, although Caroline may disagree with me on that point."

To her surprise, Rebekah laughed, although her eyes lacked the right degree of sincerity to sell it.

"She does resent me with a delicious intensity," she agreed, slowing her pace so she matched Elena's. "How's your head today by the way?"

"Surprisingly fine given the fact I tried to devour the contents of the Mystic Grill bar last night." Elena gave her a small smile. "Thanks for taking care of me."

"Don't mention it...ever," Rebekah returned. "I charge by the hour for taking care of drunken people, just to let you know."

"Do you never divulge in a drink yourself?"

"Alcohol dulls the senses. Even if you think you're sober, any trace of alcohol in your system slows you down. I can't let myself be hindered by the manufactured product of a species desperate to forget the sins they have attached to their souls."

Elena frowned.

"You talk like you're from a different time. I'd never noticed that before."

"I was educated in several prestigious schools when I lived in England," Rebekah explained, "so perhaps it's just the way I phrase certain things, giving them an inherent posh air to them, which confuses you."

Elena ignored the subtle dig at her intelligence.

"No, it's not how you phrase things, it's the way you say them," she countered, allowing herself to pant in between each word. "You sound a thousand years old sometimes. It's weird."

Rebekah gave a flippant shrug of her shoulders.

"One of my brothers always said I had an old head on young shoulders, but I think when he said that he meant it to be an insult. I was sporting a horrific bad hairdo at the time." She laughed at the memory. "I did resemble an old hag, but that was only because Kol, another of my brothers, had insisted on tackling me during a violent game our family used to play, and so my hair, rather like my family, descended into madness."

Elena couldn't help but note the way Rebekah's eyes lit up when she slipped up and talked about her past, despite her bizarre stance on not addressing it. It was a pleasant change to see, like watching the ice queen thaw out under a spring sun.

Then, as if she'd flipped some sort of switch, the warmth fled from Rebekah's eyes, and she increased her pace, as if trying to outrun their conversation, and Elena felt excruciating pain in her side as she tried to match hers.

They carried on this way for another half hour, with conversation kept to a bare minimum (if you counted Rebekah's sharp orders as conversation that is), and Elena gradually felt the loss of feeling in her legs. When Rebekah said that they could stop, it was with a half sob, half laugh that she collapsed, panting and wheezing. A good physical physique, she was beginning to realise, did not equal good physical fitness. Even cheerleading had been a struggle sometimes, although that could've been because Caroline had been just as ruthless as Rebekah at pushing her to her limit.

"I think we should call it a day," Rebekah announced, studying Elena coolly. "I'm not going to get much more out of you, and we should really save some energy for fighting later."

Elena couldn't make heads or tails of the way her companion could just switch from hot to cold in under a second flat, but rather than aggravate her, she nodded, and decided to just go with her rapid mood swings. She had a feeling Rebekah was one of those odd characters you met who never explained anything they ever did, or why they were the way they were, if you pushed them for answers; you just had to let them open up in their own time.

She began some exercises designed to cool her body down, aware cold eyes were plastered on her the entire time. She paid Rebekah no heed, still recovering from last night's drinking session, aware the great pain she tried to cover up with alcohol still resided inside her, an irremovable mark akin to a tattoo which could never be erased. Maybe part of the problem was believing in this absurd theory that if she drank frequently enough it might just be enough to make her forget altogether.

"You gonna give me a lift back?" she yelled as she followed Rebekah to her car, watching as the blonde effortlessly slid into the seat and then started the engine, with no indication she was waiting for her.

With a devilish smirk, Rebekah turned back, moving the car forwards an inch which gave Elena her answer.

"Consider the walk back your cool down exercise!" she called, with a strange amount of mirth for a supposed ice queen, and then sped off.

"BUT IT'S FIVE MILES BACK, AND I CAN'T FEEL MY LEGS ANYMORE!" Elena bellowed, aware of the futility of her somewhat delayed response. "YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME OUT HERE!"

But she had anyway.

Rebekah did her own thing, regardless of anyone else's input, which was something Elena was coming to learn about the blonde.

She scowled, annoyed, but not entirely surprised, with how this day had gone so far.

It wasn't like she didn't know the way back home anyway, but her legs ached, and there was a dull pain arising in her stomach, and her hair stuck to her face thanks to the layer of sweat she'd built up on the run itself, and all she wanted to do was go home, take a long shower, and then collapse onto the nearest soft surface so she could just rest.

With an irritable sigh, Elena decided she could either yell fruitlessly some more after her companion, or she could actually begin the arduous journey home, and she elected to undertake the latter after a moment to gather her breath, cursing Rebekah and her very nature all the way home.

...

..

.

"And you're actually surprised she left you behind?" Caroline snorted. "Sorry, Elena, but you kind of had that coming. We all know Rebekah is a dump 'em and leave 'em type of girl, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if her romantic history follows that exact same pattern."

The three girls sat in a booth in the Mystic Grills, nursing their wounds after another tough day under Rebekah's strict eye. Caroline had been pushed to her limits on a five mile trek from the centre of town to the fringes of the woods, and Bonnie was battered and bruised from the fighting exercises the blonde had put her through, left pale and stricken and rendered quiet by some deep emotion she wasn't, at present, revealing to anyone. At some point during the day, they'd been allowed a certain amount of rest before moving on to the next activity. Rebekah had this weird policy of ensuring that they did their training regimes separately at least a couple of times a week, but Caroline had sarcastically theorised it was because she liked to verbally pick them apart individually because as a group they proved to be resilient to criticism. Needless to say, all three of them were sore, tired and ready for a drink.

"I don't think her love life is for us to comment on, Care," Elena interjected, but she was too exhausted to try and summon up a defence for Rebekah's character, not when she thoroughly irritated with the vivacious blonde herself.

"You think it's okay to be drinking after your binge session last night?" Bonnie changed the subject promptly, eyeing the dark brown liquid Elena happened to be nursing, her lips pursed. It was clear she wasn't quite all there, but the concern she showed for Elena was part of Bonnie's nature, given the fact that they two, out of the three of them, had the longest history, knowing each other since they'd been infants.

"It's just the one," Elena assured her. "Believe it or not, that run earlier knocked the hangover right out of my head. Kind of did wonders for me, actually."

"So Rebekah actually did a good thing?" Caroline made a face. "Nah, that doesn't sound right at all."

Elena couldn't help but laugh, because Caroline's dislike of a person – any person, not just limited to Rebekah– showed so much on her face, even when she had to talk to them in a civil way, and it made it a more comical affair to watch as she tried to attempt to hide the condescension buried in every line along her face. Caroline was one of those people who firmly believed you had to click with a person to be friends with them, and that anybody you didn't click with it was for a good reason and you were better off avoiding them altogether.

This didn't make Caroline anti-social at all, but it made her extra cautious about who she trusted, because due to a traumatic event a few years ago, life had made it clear even family couldn't be trusted, and so she'd had to retire her bubbly, overfriendly personality altogether, creating a warier, but still bubbly, personality all for the sake of protecting her heart.

The fact of the matter was that Caroline didn't click with Rebekah, but the reason for which, Elena suspected, was down to jealousy. Rebekah's clean cut, overly beautiful facade, combined with her ruthless strength and ridiculously organised personality made her a worthy opponent, and Caroline was still deep down the competitive cheerleading type yearning to be top dog, and so that led to the two of them butting heads not long after they'd first exchanged equally wary 'hellos'. Elena found it quite fascinating to watch, and although she gave Rebekah a fair trial whenever Caroline insisted on holding her accountable for something, no matter how trivial the complaint was, she always took her best friend's side.

"Where are we off to next then, Bon?" she asked, nudging her dark haired friend with a smile, also appraising her friend with concern clearly evident on her features. "Somewhere glamorous I hope?"

"Like Vegas!" Caroline interjected excitedly.

"Vegas isn't glamorous, Care," Elena pointed out with a grin.

"Anywhere that has gambling, alcohol, and a ridiculous amount of lights to make it look like a giant fairground attraction is definitely glamorous in my book."

"Then your standards of glamour are very low."

Caroline poked her tongue out.

"Always gotta be a buzzkill, Elena, don't ya? We should just call you Buzzkill Elena."

"Cute."

"I do try," Caroline said, winking at her.

"Hey guys," came a familiar sound, one which had Elena instinctively on edge.

"Hi, Matt Cheatovan," Caroline greeted chirpily, though her eyes narrowed into slits. "How's the love life?"

"Caroline," Elena hissed.

She did not need her friends to still be angry with him on her behalf, but the fact they resented him for her sake was nothing short of touching.

"No, it's fine," Matt said dismissively. "Nothing I don't deserve."

He looked downcast for half a second, then rebounded surprisingly quick and took their orders before abruptly turning on his heel and retreating to the kitchen.

"He looks so sad," Bonnie observed quietly.

"Good, he deserves it. He cheated on Elena. Cheaters don't deserve happy-ever-afters," Caroline declared.

"I'm all for the Team Elena love, Care, but try not to rub it in his face every time we come here," Elena implored. "We're trying to be friends."

"Can't be friends with an ex, Elena. Haven't all the rom-com movies we've watched over the years taught us that?"

Elena rolled her eyes but didn't press the matter.

"Speaking of lousy boyfriends, how's Ben these days?" Caroline then moved on to Bonnie's love life – or lack of one.

Bonnie gritted her teeth, looking paler than normal. "Stop asking, Caroline. He's history."

"He was a scumbag though, like a proper scumbag," Caroline ranted, unaware of the seething looks her friends were giving her. "Who has the time to be a chauvinistic douchebag in this century though, really?"

"Caroline..."

"I mean, his whole attitude to you was just insane. Asking you to make him sandwiches, joking about your appearance to his friends, calling you his woman, I mean it's so disgusting and so –so... "

"Please...stop." Bonnie snapped, slamming her hand on the table in a movement which had her friends instantly flinching. "What is this, anyway, boyfriend honesty hour?" She rose to her feet, suddenly looking worn out. "I just – I can't do this right now, Care." She exhaled sharply, visibly flustered, marks of stress sketched into her skin. "I – I gotta go..."

And with that she disappeared out of the bar, leaving a perplexed Caroline in her wake.

"What's with her?"

Elena gave her a quiet look.

"If you'd bothered picking up your phone this morning, Care, you would've learned that her grandmother died, okay? This was supposed to be a way of helping her forget her troubles, not reminding her of them."

Caroline suddenly looked stricken.

"Oh god," she bemoaned. "And I was only dodging her because I just had no desire to talk to anyone after the morning I've had. How did she even have the energy to let Rebekah boss her around this morning?"

Elena shrugged.

"She said she needed to keep busy, keep her mind off the funeral arrangements, plus she only found out at noon, so up until a certain point she was blissfully unaware anything had happened."

"How did her grandmother - ?"

"Heart attack," Elena replied solemnly.

Caroline didn't speak for a long time, her expression one of misery.

"Why do I always say the wrong thing, or just fail to be there altogether?" she moaned aloud after a ten minute pause.

Elena gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Bonnie knows you're there for her. She just could've done without the reminder of her ex-boyfriend on top of everything else today, that's all."

Caroline slumped across the table. "I'm a horrible human being."

"No, you're not. Look, Bonnie wasn't even going to say anything to anyone – for some strange reason she has the need to bottle everything up, put everything on hold until she can deal with it later – but we were talking, and I noticed she was acting off, so I pulled a, well, a you and got the truth out of her."

"That's what this meet up was about..." Caroline trailed off. "I thought it was weird she was the one who got us together for a binge drinking session of all things. Bonnie isn't really a drinker." She glanced at the space where Bonnie had been sitting, frowning at the array of shot and wine glasses littered where she'd been. "Wow... she really needed those."

Elena nodded solemnly.

"Looks like it's just the two of us for a while, Care. Bonnie says she wants to handle all the funeral and stuff, and then she wants to take some time off from all this vampire business."

"But we can't do this without her. She's the brains."

"And I'm the beauty," Rebekah trilled, sliding into the seat opposite them, either blissfully unaware of the simultaneous transformation of Elena and Caroline's expressions into paralleled looks of combined dread and irritation or electing to ignore them. "What's going on?"

Elena shot her a look.

"Bonnie's grandmother died, so we're taking some time off."

"No, you're not. I don't care if the President died, we're getting you girls in shape and ready to fight vampires," Rebekah said coldly.

"Seriously?" Caroline demanded, looking close to boiling point. "This job doesn't pay, and it's mostly voluntary work," here she gave Rebekah a dirty look, "so in essence we make our own hours. If one of us wants to take some needed time off to grieve a family member, then they should get to take that time off, no questions asked."

"Fascinating," Rebekah gave a mock yawn, "your impassioned speeches really are quite moving, Caroline."

"Shut the hell up." Caroline threw her a disgusted look. "I'm not here for this. I'm going to go see if Bonnie's okay."

And she stormed off before Rebekah could get in another comment designed to ruffle her feathers.

Elena peered through her eyelashes at a momentarily disgruntled Rebekah.

"This bitchy act ... is any of it actually real?" she questioned.

"I assure you, love, it's all me, all one hundred percent real so no need to cry over it."

An exasperated sigh pushed its way past Elena's lips.

"You don't make it easy to defend you, you know."

Rebekah looked confused.

"Why do you even try then?"

"Because I was raised to see the best in people, even if they believed themselves not worth saving, and also because I've marathoned enough Criminal Minds to see right through this facade you put on."

Rebekah snorted derisively. "Unlikely, but please, do divulge your findings. Your bullshit might actually be enough to entertain me in this otherwise dismal town."

Leaning back in her seat, Elena cracked her knuckles, smiled enigmatically and opened her mouth to relay her findings.

"So this bitchy act is just that – an act. You push people away because you don't want to get hurt. You've been hurt before – "

"You're just repeating what little I've told you, so, so far je suis unimpressed," Rebekah cut across her.

Elena scowled but otherwise ignored the interruption.

"You retreat into this cold bubble that no one can penetrate, and you close yourself off, distancing yourself from anyone you could call friend, and you hide your heart away, only it's not just to keep yourself from getting hurt – it's to make sure no one gets close enough to find out who you really are, because the idea of someone knowing you, really knowing you, terrifies you."

Rebekah rose to her feet, quiet anger brewing behind the black pits of her eyes. She slammed a furious hand down on the table, leaning over so that she was almost nose to nose with Elena, who was surprised, nay shocked, to feel something – sparks of some description – ferment between them, not quite electricity but something pretty darn close, a feeling which had her shifting uncomfortably, her skin growing uncomfortably warm...

"Don't. Presume. To. Know. Me," Rebekah snarled. "I am not some fancy textbook you can read and learn in a day. There are things about me that would curl your toes if you knew them. Secrets so scandalous it would rock your universe let alone your world. I'm not a girl you get to know, okay? I operate alone."

Elena rose to her feet in a fluid movement which had Rebekah leaning back with a degree of surprise.

"Then why are you here? Why are you training me, Caroline and Bonnie? It can't be out of the goodness of your heart – by your reckoning, you don't have one. So what is your motivation here? It's the one thing about you I can't figure out."

An unpleasant sneer uncurled on Rebekah's lips.

"I'm sure you'll try your best to work it out, Elena. You make it your business to know what goes in everyone else's lives, so snooping around in mine should be no extra skin off your nose to do."

And with a flare Elena was quickly coming to realise was one of her trademark qualities, Rebekah stormed off.

It didn't tell her a whole lot about her, but Elena could glean this much from their few and far between interactions.

Rebekah was hiding something – and Elena was going to find out what she was hiding.

But first she needed to join Caroline and see if Bonnie needed any help with the funeral arrangements of her grandmother. Friends, after all, came first and then later on, when the dust had settled, she could get back to trying to work out the details of Rebekah's life, not beforehand.

All the same, her brain cautioned her, be aware that some things are meant to be learned, and some are meant to be kept secret. Don't pry if you can't handle knowing the truth.

She was sure she'd heard that advice somewhere before, but her memory failed at coming up with who'd given it to her.

Shrugging her shoulders, Elena went to the bar to pay their – frankly – overly expensive tab, and then left the vicinity, throwing one last look at Matt (because she was that weak, damn it) before she left.

.

..

...

Almost breaking into vampire speed, Rebekah stormed off to her ridiculously expensive looking property on the outskirts of Mystic Falls, flummoxed by her own spectrum of emotions, which now included a kind of rage you couldn't categorise into the normal sectors of 'jealous induced rage' or 'idiotic behaviour induced rage'. It was an internalised rage at how she'd let her guard down, thus allowing Elena a glimpse at the panicked girl behind the ice queen mask.

Once inside her grand mansion – which she'd never allowed the girls to come and visit – she descended the white staircase, finding the grand display of all her frivolous purchases – from the expensive decor, to the pointless furniture which she hardly used – didn't settle her like she usually did. The illusion of home, of having a place to escape to at the end of a rough day, usually calmed her frayed nerves, but not today. No, there was something about Elena which frazzled her. She let her get too close to the edge, and now she'd seen a peek of the apocalyptic nature of her true personality.

True, she'd not let down enough to warn Elena she was trouble, but Rebekah still felt as though she'd revealed enough to set off the alarm bells of Elena's curious personality, and that meant unless she did some damage control, she was likely to be found out.

Lesson one about women: never underestimate their powers to be able to find out any sort of truth, good or bad.

Her phone rang, cutting into her thoughts, and it was with a frenzied sort of anger that she answered it.

"Hello?"

"How's my sinfully naive baby sister?"

She rolled her eyes.

"I'm in Mystic Falls, I'm bored, and I'm trying to keep a low profile – how do you think I am, Nik?"

"Ah, the joys of attempting to blend in to an otherwise dull-as-dishwater society. I don't see why you bother to be honest."

"You know why I bother, you ungrateful bastard."

"Tut, tut, such vulgar language. You know the score, Rebekah. Keep Elena there and none the wiser until I return in two weeks."

"She knows about vampires, Nik, and she knows how to kill them. It's only a matter of time before she stumbles upon my secret – our secret, should I say."

"I can't assist you until I ensure everything else for the ritual is at the ready. I lost track of the moonstone along the way, so that's been a damned nuisance to try and locate, and there's the matter of acquiring a werewolf and vampire to sacrifice too."

"If need be, I can turn someone here and have them at your disposal," Rebekah replied, thinking of a certain blonde haired individual who she held a special kind of hatred for.

"That's my girl. Always thinking outside the box. Now, remember, do what you need to do to ensure Elena remains in the dark. If she gets a hint of the truth, she'll run, and we'll have ourselves a Katerina situation all over again."

"Got it."

Rebekah hung up before her brother could lecture her even more on the critical importance of making sure this ritual took place. He was an undermining, self-deluded, arrogant man, but he was a crafty and intelligent individual at the same time, and he'd been planning this ritual for a long time, making sure he knew exactly what it entailed and how it worked so that he could reap the results in the correct fashion.

She should've told him to let it go, to drop his selfish desires and just enjoy an eternity with his family, but he was impulsive and stubborn, and once he had a goal in mind, nobody could try and coax him to do anything other than pursue it.

Why did she continue to let men use and abuse her, she wondered? Some came in appealing packages, with gleaming eyes and sinful smiles, promising her love and affection, what she craved most in the entire world, and they came with an equally appealing package of normality, but they'd all broken her heart, and the few relationships she'd pursued with women had been equally as fruitless, because men were easily tempted into straying, and women were fickle with their own desires.

She hid a bitter tear, electing to turn off her emotions for the moment.

And yet she found even humanity less, the room she stood in felt larger and emptier than it actually was, her eyes taking in everything with a detached interest, her heart vaguely aware it was supposed to care about the fact she had essentially the equivalent of a modern day empire – the everyday man's empire, if you will – with no one to run it with.

Not that she needed love to be happy. She could function just fine without it.

But Rebekah knew her own mind - her own heart even - and it just craved a companion, someone to trust; an ally who would go above and beyond for her.

You know, Elena's kind of gone above and beyond for you already, a tiny voice inside her mind craftily reminded her. You know, by defending you with her friends, who are perfectly right in their assessments of your character. You don't make it easy for anyone to like you.

Shut up, shut UP! You're wrong, she silently screamed back. I make it easy for people to betray me! If I've closed myself off, it's for a reason. I have to look out for myself here because no one, not even my own family, will do that for me.

Such a defensive tone for someone who claims to not give a damn about anything anymore, her mind simpered sarcastically.

Rebekah's barrier guarding her humanity from seeping into her features suddenly felt weaker, and she knew that all the times she'd spent building it up had taken its toll on it. One day it was going to break, and the floodgates would open, and misery would consume her, but for now she'd kept her humanity at bay, indulging in some emotion, but not enough to make her essentially a sitting target for men equipped with false promises and promiscuous natures.

It was worth noting, however, that since she'd arrived in Mystic Falls, all the times she'd come close to letting true emotion flood her body they'd been triggered by one Elena Gilbert.

Maybe it wasn't men she needed to watch out for here.

Interesting...


	3. Never Smile At A Crocodile

The funeral for Bonnie's grandmother was beautiful and sentimental, so everything Bonnie had wanted and more for Sheila Bennett's final send-off.

Well...mostly.

Sheila had been a very colourful character in Mystic Falls, and every year on Halloween she'd had a tradition of telling these fantastic stories about witches which had fascinated the younger children, but had led to some of the adolescents calling her kooky because the way she told the stories had made it seemed like she'd believed in their very existence, which had of course opened her up to mockery. The adults took no notice of the stories, generally viewing her as just this warm hearted woman with a passion for the occult and supernatural, which had been part of her career, so most of the eulogies given had revolved around people's recollections of Sheila's scariest stories, and the way she'd made Halloween exciting year after year.

Bonnie stood there, resenting all the false sadness around her, because, truthfully, to everyone her grandmother had just been this crazy old lady, a borderline alcoholic even, because how could anyone sober believe there was any truth to what she was saying? Why was it people could only say nice things about someone after they'd passed on? How hard was it really to pay someone a compliment when they were actually alive to hear and accept it?

Caroline and Elena huddled themselves around, always on hand to be a shoulder to cry on, but Bonnie wasn't a big crier. She'd shed a few tears when she'd seen the coffin lowered into the ground, but after that she'd kept a solemn air around her, accepting people's condolences with an almost forced grace, aware of who'd mocked her grandmother and who hadn't, not really sure what to do with the various stories people told her about her grandmother – some of them sounding like absolute bullshit - except to put on a false smile and act like she couldn't tell the phonies from the sincere.

"This is so depressing," Caroline said thoughtlessly, before she instantly cringed. "Sorry... wrong choice of words."

"No, you're right," Bonnie agreed, surprising all three of them. "Grams would've hated this whole thing...and not just because it was her funeral. She would've wanted it to be a small private ceremony – just family and friends. My dad insisted on opening it up to the public though."

"Why?" Elena asked.

"Because he ignores people's wishes, and just makes a point of doing whatever he likes even though he's hardly ever home to know what people would've wanted," Bonnie spat out, suddenly close to tears again.

Instantly, Caroline and Elena threw their arms around her, and she surrendered to their fierce embrace, appreciating them more than she could ever say.

"I'm sure Rebekah is throwing a fit because we all missed training," she said, changing the subject in an effort to lighten the mood.

"Well the bitch can kiss my hundred dollar boots if she is," Caroline declared haughtily. "I wonder if she's ever lost anyone, because if she had she would understand why you might not be in the mood to be pushed around by an obnoxious, hot headed, cold blooded bitch."

"Her brother," Elena said thoughtlessly, with an air of absent-mindedness. "She lost her little brother."

Bonnie and Caroline gave Elena a simultaneous look of astonishment.

"How do you know that?"

"She told me." Sensing that wasn't going to be enough for her curious friends, Elena then added, "Look, she came to the bar the night I got hammered – beyond the norm, I mean – and she kind of... took care of me. We got talking and she let slip that information." She saw Caroline's look of inherent suspicion. "What?"

"She tells us nothing, yet she opens up to you?" Caroline's eyebrows knitted together with confusion. "I mean, no offence Elena, but what does she see in you worth opening up to?"

"Oh nice, Caroline!"

"I said no offence!"

"Adding the words 'no offence' to an offensive statement doesn't eradicate the offensiveness of said statement!"

"Now this... this my Grams would've liked," Bonnie mused to herself, amused despite herself. "She practically thrived on tension."

It worked as a tension breaker; Caroline and Elena smiled and shook their heads.

"Sheila was always one for drama," Elena agreed, chuckling softly.

"Her bedtime stories I swear to god could've given horror movie directors a run for their money," Bonnie reminisced. "My dad at one point insisted I wasn't ever going to stay the night around her house after I'd had a stream of nightmares involving burning witches fuelled by one of her stories." She shuddered at the memory. "I still have that dream sometimes."

"You know funerals shouldn't just be about celebrating the good parts about someone," Caroline said thoughtfully. "They should be about remembering that they weren't perfect, and yet we loved them anyway."

Bonnie's eyes swam with tears at that.

"Caroline Forbes, where did you come up with that? That's just so perfect!"

Caroline looped any arm through Bonnie's.

"I have my moments," she replied softly. "I might screw up – a lot – but sometimes I do say the right thing. Also, I think that might've been from a movie..."

"Caroline!"

"Kidding! I think..."

Elena and Bonnie chuckled, deciding the day Caroline changed was the day that life was simply not worth living anymore. Her inappropriate remarks, her borderline ditzy moments, her strength all just shone through one blonde haired package of just imperfect perfection.

"Want to hit the Grill and try and get to the booze before anyone else does?" Bonnie suggested.

"Best suggestion I've heard all day," Caroline announced.

"I'll buy the first round," Elena added.

"You bet you will, and then you can spill your guts as to how you've managed to get Rebekah to 'fess to you things that might actually make me hate her less," Caroline proclaimed.

Elena rolled her eyes, but smiled because Caroline could usually smell a good story a mile away – it was why she'd originally wanted to go into broadcast journalism before this vampire business had darkened their doorways – and if she wanted the truth, she had her ways of getting it, so maybe it was easier on this one occasion to just give it to her.

"Fine, but any judgmental comments and I'll put your old prom dress on E-Bay," she threatened humorously.

Caroline glared at her. "You wouldn't. That's an expensive, one-of-a-kind dress I hope to pass down to my daughter some day!"

"Providing you can find a man who you don't chew and then spit out alive first," Bonnie teased, joining in the banter.

Caroline rolled her eyes, before looking up to the sky and sighing theatrically.

"This is supposed to be your day, Sheila, and these two idiots are trying to upstage you. Now would be the time to send, like, a lightning bolt or something to frazzle their perfect hairdos." She waited patiently for a long minute and then sighed. "Yeah, nothing supernatural seems to be on my side today."

Bonnie let out a deep chuckle.

"You guys are the best," she said, throwing her arms around her friends. "Thanks for helping me smile today of all days. Grams always loved having you two over... though with you, Care, she said she could only handle you in small doses."

"Most people can't even handle that," Caroline smirked.

There was what appeared to be an appreciative rumble of thunder in the sky after that comment, provoking the girls to giggle, earning them some stern stares from the people around them, so they quickly stifled their laughs, adopted a sombre look, and then headed off in search of much needed liquor.

...

..

.

The moment she opened the door, Rebekah was acutely aware there was something different about the atmosphere inside.

Hefty men's cologne, which her keen nostrils detected in mere seconds, lingered in the corridor. There was also a kind of quiet to the house which felt unnatural, the ironic kind of silence you can only attribute to there being someone else in your house. She was also sure some items had been moved, like her hairbrush, which always lay in waiting on the side for her by the door, so she could quickly brush her hair before leaving, or after returning home. It always rested under the gold gilded mirror, where she could check her reflection for traces of imperfection. Vanity was her most human flaw, this she'd realised and appreciated over time, and she spent time, as a result, nurturing that flaw for the simple fact it made her feel human.

"Okay," she called, irritating tracing her voice. "You can come out, whoever you are. Breaking into a lady's house is just rude, and I hope you know I'll be breaking one bone in your body for every item I find missing."

"Aw, sis, why you gotta be that way?" leered an all too familiar voice.

She looked up, noticing Kol, her obnoxious brother – well, one of them anyway – leaning over the banister accompanying the stairs, his hair cropped, spiked and gelled so that he resembled some ghastly imitation of a generic boy band. He poked his tongue out, eyes glinting with mischief, and then he made a graceful leap over the banister to land playfully at her feet.

"Well, you certainly know how to make an entrance," she conceded begrudgingly.

"And you certainly know how to pay a man a compliment," he verbally sparred, giving a bow in jest.

"I wasn't paying you a compliment – merely stating a fact."

"Aw, Bex – you haven't changed a bit."

"So Niklaus released you from your latest spell in the box then," she noted, not sure whether to be pleased by that or concerned.

"Indeed, but he is as hell bent as ever on backing up his real family with a cluster of hybrid spawn," Kol said, making a disgusted face. "He's kept Finn in his box, though, which at least ensures a lack of dullness."

"That's our brother you speak ill of, mind your tongue!" she snapped.

He wagged his finger in her face.

"You made no valiant attempts to save him at any point, dear sister, so please get off that high horse of yours and join the rest of us as we fight in Nik's family style version of The Hunger Games." He looked at the expression on her face. "What? I happened to catch a glimpse of the film. Had lots of violence in it. My kind of film."

She shook her head, refraining from commenting.

"So Nik presumably sent you back to keep an eye on me, correct?" she said, again refraining herself from making a snarky comment at that.

"Correct, and he also wanted me, as your loving, doting brother, to make sure you stayed away from the boys in this town. Something about history repeating itself... yadda yadda yadda...he gave quite the speech on the matter. I managed to get the gist before tuning the rest of it out." Kol yawned pointedly. "But yes, in a word, I'm here to make sure you stay here until the ritual is completed. Elijah's dropping by too, and I'll be meeting up with him later on – oh, and some of Nik's friends from the 20s will be stopping by too."

"Nik had friends? In the 20s? Oh..." Rebekah scrunched up her nose with disgust as her own memory answered her questions. "The Salvatores. Does Nik really need all available hands for a stupid ritual no one but him even cares about?"

Kol shrugged. "Apparently he's not leaving anything to chance this time... not after what happened with Katerina."

Rebekah made a distasteful noise, and then raided her own alcohol cupboard, handing Kol a bottle before he could make any comment on her being a dreadful host. While they drank, she took the time to study her brother, noting he seemed to have no queries about the century he'd woken up in. Occasionally she noted him glancing at some object with curiosity, but she knew from experience if he was curious about something, he tended to find out for himself rather than asking. It had led to him offending a lot of people in the past simply because he couldn't be bothered with the usual rules of etiquette, or even simple manners.

"I've missed Elijah, I must say," she said quietly, "I'm assuming he's made his usual plea for our brother to behave, only for Nik to have completely ignored him?"

"Indeed, but Nik persuaded him to join his cause with the simplest of arguments that he never actually means – that doing this will finally make him happy, will finally let him enjoy his family." Kol made a noise of disbelief. "The day Nik shows any sign of appreciation for any of us, I'll swear off violence for a whole year."

Rebekah had to laugh at that, because it was true.

Niklaus, for all his intelligence, never seemed to be able to comprehend what he truly sought century after century had always been with him – family. He lusted for power and loyalty, but those two came with being in a family like theirs, so why he wanted more was beyond anyone's understanding. She didn't know what was worse – his behaviour, or the fact his family let him behave that way because it gave them an easier life.

"So how are the Salvatores these days?" she purred, settling into the cream coloured lounger chair she almost never used. "Stefan say anything about me?"

She wouldn't expect him to. Their fling in the 1920s had been just that – a fling. His switch had been off, and he'd been a hell of a dance partner, yet despite the fact they'd made a pretty good team, she'd had to say goodbye, and that was because of Niklaus.

It was always because of Niklaus her flings – her reckless grasps at finding love – never lasted longer than a breath, and that was the reason (among many) she resented him, yet the bond of family, their ties to a promise made a long time ago, kept her loyal to him, though she hated herself for that loyalty. Every time she convinced herself to break free, something – the threat of being daggered, maybe some half hearted desire to keep her family intact and on as good a term as it was humanly possible to be – always kept her from running. Maybe she was stupid, maybe she was naive... maybe it was some combination of the two states, but either way she knew she couldn't abandon her family.

"Not really, but he doesn't say much I listen to," Kol jested, smirking. "That Damon character isn't much more interesting. Likes to talk a big game though. I almost like him."

"Almost?"

"He made fun of Elijah, so I had to snap his neck because that's my job."

Rebekah rolled her eyes.

"Boys," she groaned. "How do you get anything done without us women?"

Kol smirked as he loped an arm around her neck.

"You haven't changed," he repeated, "and I love it."

.

..

...

After the wake, arms looped clumsily around one another, Elena, Caroline and Bonnie started to walk back, half intoxicated, half nostalgic for the days when they'd remained otherwise blind to the true darkness the world concealed.

"Do you think your Grams knew?" Caroline asked, the end letter of certain words slurring a little. "'Bout vampires – d'ya think she knew?"

Bonnie contemplated that for a moment.

"I'm shure she probably did," she agreed. "She wash very clever like that."

"Wash?" Elena giggled at the pair of them. "You pair of intoxicated idiots, let's get you home."

"Why aren't you ash drunk ash ush?" Caroline whined. "Buzzkill Eleeeeenaaa..."

"Becaush – I mean because someone has to be the designated walker here."

"Grams always said you were the sensible one," Bonnie hiccuped, misery audible in her voice. "I miss her."

"At least her death wasn't down to supernatural causes," Elena pointed out, in a lame attempt at cheering her up.

Bonnie raised her shoulders and then dropped them in a pale imitation of a shrug.

"Doesn't suck any less, but you're right."

"Let's shnot talk about death anymore," Caroline slurred. "S'depressing."

"S'hmy Grams who died, I should be allowed to talk about her as much as I like," Bonnie shot back, alcohol stirring up some sort of bottled up rage she'd not tapped into beforehand, meaning even the most trivial of remarks was likely to set her off.

"Hey, hey... I'm not trying to offend..." Caroline began, but the damage was done.

"Yeah, you say that a lot, but guess what, you tend to do that anyway," Bonnie snapped, detaching herself from the group in an attempt to storm off.

"Guys," Elena became the peacemaker, inserting herself between the two of them in case a physical brawl broke out, "let's not do this. We've all drank a lot tonight, so let's all bear that in mind when..."

"Oh shut up, Miss Self-Righteous," Bonnie, surprisingly, turned on Elena. "Don't stick your nose into other people's business, okay?"

Elena blinked, instantly hurt, but she kept her cool, facing Bonnie's temper with a surprisingly even look.

"Bonnie, whatever you're really angry about, don't take it out on us, okay? We're here to help. Vent to us, not at us."

Bonnie didn't respond, the alcohol making her sway a little on the spot. A cold breeze sobered her up a little though, as she soon regained her balance, her eyes flickering from the cautious looking Caroline, to the calm Elena.

"I am pissed off," she admitted. "I hate this, what our lives are. I was in the church today, watching them talk about the way she died, how at least she went peacefully, and it just struck me that I was actually grateful for how she died. How twisted is that? It's the most normal thing that's happened in my life for a long time and it sucks."

She kicked a stray can nearby, and it made an unsettling loud noise as it bounced off the path and into the road, shattering the silence into shards which rooted themselves into their skins, opening the old wounds as well as creating new ones.

"She's right," Caroline spoke up, still clearly drunk but evidently affected by Bonnie's words all the same. "This wasn't how our lives were s'posed to be."

"No, it wasn't," Elena agreed despondently.

"You know I never told her about what we did," Bonnie said, sounding miserable. "She told me all her secrets about being a witch, and I just kept humouring her, never really believing it, you know? But if vampires can, and do, exist, why can't witches?" She shook her head, disgusted with herself. "Even with what I do, I still couldn't – can't - believe witches existed, and she probably died thinking I thought of her as being just as crazy as everyone else did."

"That's not true, you know. Look, we all want to believe the people we've lost died believing the best in us, even when we know they didn't, but in this case I have every faith Sheila was proud of you. I wouldn't have been surprised if she knew you hunted vampires, and I'm sure the reason she didn't say anything was because she knew you could handle it."

Bonnie's eyes filled with tears, and without another word she fell into Elena's arms, sobbing into her chest. Eventually, after struggling to walk over to them in her heels while still intoxicated, Caroline joined their little group, flinging her arms haphazardly around them, the three of them stood there in the cold, each silently thinking about the losses which at this point defined them, and defined what they did. They'd helped each other through these fundamental tragedies, but in the end these events had been brutal lessons, teaching them ways to keep themselves closed off to the world to protect their hearts.

Elena, in that moment, came to an epiphany about Rebekah, following this train of thought, and she was about to divulge this to the others when their attentions fell on a sleek SUV, which was an unusual sight in a suburban area such as this. Trailing behind it was a blue Camaro, a really attractive looking car, if slightly beaten down.

The SUV slid to an easy halt next to them, the windows pulled down to reveal a man with cropped hair peeking out, his eyes trailing over their bodies individually shamelessly. He looked young – perhaps around the mid twenties mark – but his eyes gave away a glimmer of something unidentifiable which reached into Elena's soul and shook it mercilessly.

"Ladies," he drawled, his eyes landing on Bonnie, who looked slightly surprised by the attention. "May we offer you a ride home?"

"Abso – " Caroline began, squealing at his attractiveness, attempting to barge forwards, but Elena and Bonnie held her back.

"No thank you," they said as one, ignoring their friend's sigh of disappointment.

"Really?" He focused his eyes on Bonnie's. "Come for a ride, darling. You look like you could do with a little fun."

Bonnie and Elena, who were much more sober than Caroline at this point, instantly stiffened.

They'd learned to recognise the signs of compulsion, and thank god they'd had the brilliant idea to craft jewellery laced with vervain, which they never failed to wear, as well as mixing it into every drink they had, almost religiously.

They were unarmed, alone for the most part, and that worried them, especially knowing that their reflexes were going to be less than up to scratch due to their alcohol intake.

"Kol," rebuked a voice that could've thawed ice itself, so smooth to the ears was it, and Elena found herself inexplicably drawn to the sound of it. "That's enough."

The one called Kol drew back, his brow furrowed at the resistance shown against his compulsion. Another head popped out next to him, bearing an apologetic expression.

Elena's eyes widened at the attractiveness of both brothers, the second bearing auburn hair which was neatly tucked at the back, yet strands still fell across his face. He appeared older, but not by a great margin, and dressed in a suit it was easy to assume they'd been out somewhere formal.

"I do apologise for my brother's behaviour," the second man said, his eyes drawn to Elena, something in his expression keeping her from running the other way, like he was inexplicably fascinated by her appearance, though for what reason she couldn't say. "He gets a little... promiscuous after dark."

"Promiscuous," she repeated in a clipped tone of voice, noting with some disturbance that the other brother seemed to be eyeing her now, undisguised mischief haunting his eyes. "Well, better keep him on a leash then. We need to be going."

She grabbed Bonnie and Caroline's hands and pulled them forwards, hoping against hope they hadn't spotted her discomfort and recognised it as fear, otherwise they could kiss their lives goodbye.

But instantly Kol was there in front of them, flashing them a smile they didn't have to be vampire hunters to instantly distrust.

"Kol – " the second brother warned.

"What's going on?" a third voice joined the mix, the driver of the Camaro, who'd presumably only stopped to view the action, striding forwards.

Elena's breath caught in her throat, and suddenly nothing mattered anymore. Her eyes locked with eyes a fiercely cold blue in colour, complimented with matted hair as dark as a raven's breast, the owner clad in dark clothes, which fitted his dark personality she supposed. He glanced at her, and recognition flashed in his eyes, and she felt a ball of fear coil itself in the pit of her stomach.

After all, it wasn't every day you looked into the eyes of your parents' killer.

"Please leave us alone," she managed to get out, directing this to the youngest looking man, who appeared amused by her comment.

Bonnie's hand slid effortlessly into Elena's, and she knew without saying a damn thing that her friend had picked up on her fear and knew what it meant. This small action gave her a tidal wave of courage.

"Now where would be the fun in that?" Kol practically purred, reaching out to touch her hair.

She struck his hand away, prompting him to narrow his eyes meaningfully, moving towards her in a manner which didn't suggest anything other than menacing intent.

"For God's sake," muttered his brother, out of the car without another word, grabbing his brother's arm. "Kol, remember why we're here and back off."

"I'm just chatting with these delightful ladies here," he protested, winking at Bonnie, who'd completely sobered up at these words, shuddering with clear revulsion. "Why must you spoil my fun, Elijah?"

"Please let us just walk away and we won't say anything to anyone," Elena pleaded, careful to keep up the facade that they were merely helpless girls walking back from a night out, even though at this point she knew at least one of the three males harassing them happened to know a little bit more about them - well, her anyway - than that.

The raven haired man stepped forward, eyes scrutinising her carefully, his intense hearing probably picking up the sounds of her erratic heartbeat, maybe even studying the way her eyes refused to leave his, every fibre in her body screaming at her to run but her feet unwilling to obey the order. Bonnie's hand remained firmly in hers, and even Caroline had joined their ranks, though she swayed a little, her eyes flickering to each individual in turn, the woman in her checking them out with no trace of subtlety whatsoever, while the hunter inside her finally wrestled up some sobriety.

"Have we met?" the dark haired man enquired, directing this towards Elena, head tilting sideways with a mocking air of curiosity that had her hands clenching into fists by her sides.

"I don't think so," she shot back at him, but all too late realised her snippy tone might as well have screamed 'I'M LYING!'

"I could've sworn I met a girl who looked exactly like you a few years back," he said, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "Beautiful she was too, a lot like you in that department..."

"Damon..." Elijah warned, looking from Kol, who was eyeing the whole encounter with malicious delight, to Elena – and was that a look of concern on his face? – to Damon, his hands outstretched as if preparing to break up a fight.

"She was a lovely girl," Damon continued as if Elijah hadn't spoken. "But I barely got to talk to her before I had to leave." He gave a too-theatrical-to-be-real sigh. "Such is the way of things."

She trembled, but didn't waver, standing resolute in the wake of his unfathomably cruel gaze.

"Back off," Bonnie suddenly intervened, stepping forwards, pouring her fear and anger into her words so that she practically yelled them, giving him an intense look to boot which suddenly had him backing away, clutching his head in pain as he crumpled before her, turned submissive by, incredible as it seemed, her stare.

Bonnie, stunned by what she seemed to be doing, then, in a vain attempt to repeat this trick turned her gaze on Kol and Elijah, who also recoiled in pain, before crumbling to the ground, clutching their heads, roaring in pain.

"What are you doing?" Caroline hissed, frightened back into full on soberness, rendered frozen by her best friend's frightening behaviour, even if it did seem to be saving their lives.

"I don't know," Bonnie retorted, but suddenly feeling the urge to flee, she grabbed both Caroline and Elena's hands and they ran off into the night before the vampires could regain their senses and chase after them.

Damon was first to recover, and he made an instantaneous attempt at chasing after them, but Elijah swiftly blocked him.

"You two fools almost blew our cover – in fact, I'm fairly sure you blatantly advertised it," he snapped.

"They knew already," Damon snapped back. "I could see it in the Gilbert girl's eyes – she remembers me. I don't know how, since I compelled the memory out of her head, but she remembers all the same."

"They might know who we are, but they don't know why we're here," Kol pointed out, not as miffed as his co-conspirators at how the night had panned out. "We still have the advantage."

"Maybe, but considering that their professions involve vampire slaying, I can assure you the next time we meet, it'll be on their terms," Elijah retorted coolly, dusting his suit down as he rose to his feet.

"You know, I don't think the little dark haired brat knows she's a witch," Damon said, his tone thoughtful. "I could see it in her eyes. She had no idea what she was doing."

"Her powers are only surfacing now?" Elijah appeared troubled by this information. "We should inform Niklaus of this. There may be something else at work here."

"This isn't exactly Harry Potter, Elijah. So what if the girl only just discovered her powers now? It's not like there's an age restriction. I once knew a witch who only found out on her death bed of her magical heritage," Kol said, sounding bored by the whole matter.

Elijah rounded on his brother.

"She shouldn't have been capable of that level of magic if she's only just discovering her powers. First time witches always start off with basic magic: making feathers float, lighting candles etc... No, this was something else...like she was channelling something...or someone."

"Maybe she had a guardian witch angel on her shoulder," Damon snickered.

Elijah fought the urge to roll his eyes...and failed.

"We need to stay away until the night of the sacrifice," he muttered. "That means restraining yourselves from your usual parlour tricks...both of you." He glared at Kol and Damon in turn. "Got it?"

Damon simply threw him a bored look and sauntered towards his Camaro, no affirmation leaving his lips to assure Elijah that he would be on his best behaviour.

"You're such a buzzkill," Kol informed Elijah, smirking as he clambered back into the SUV.

"And that, dear brother, is how I intend to remain until our business here is complete," Elijah informed him. "So do me the courtesy of making sure there is no buzz to kill, okay?"

"No promises, brother," Kol replied cheerfully. "I can already sense we're going to have a lot of fun with those three."

Elijah didn't answer; he just simply shook his head, climbed into the front seat and started the engine.


	4. Bad Intentions

"You all are idiots," Rebekah pronounced, looking with disgust at the entourage which had gathered on her doorstep. With a withered look, she gestured for them to come inside, rolling her eyes the entire way.

"I refuse to speak to you until you remove that stick from your ass," Kol quipped. "We were just having fun, something you clearly haven't had in a century or two."

Her eyes were coal black, displaying fury on par with only the fury a woman scorned could produce.

"These girls believe I am working with them. They are intelligent... how long do you think it'll take them to find a connection between you and me? My cover will be blown and Klaus... Klaus will be furious, and I will end up in a box with a dagger through my heart, as will you all."

"Except for me," Damon pointed out cheerfully, immediately delving into Rebekah's stash of alcohol, which made her nostrils flare with disgust.

"True. I'm sure with you he'll simply mount your black heart on the wall instead."

Elijah sighed. "Please, can we not do this? We have a lot to discuss and I'd rather not have all this lingering anger in the room while we do so."

Rebekah unceremoniously dumped herself on her couch, crossing her slender legs before appraising the troupe of men before her, who wore varying degrees of uncertainty across their faces, although she noticed Damon and Kol attempted to cover their true feelings up by masking them with a cocky facade she could've done without enduring. She was infuriated by how they'd all swept into town, encroaching on her mission just because their brother gave them the command to do so. It wasn't that her brother didn't trust her to complete the task, but she knew him well enough to know he'd assume something – or someone – would distract her from fulfilling her task, hence the presence of the Testosterone Brigade.

"You're not all staying in my house," she announced, glaring at each of them in turn.

"I wouldn't want to stay in your Barbie House of Horrors anyway. I have my own property here," Damon retorted.

"Oh yes, that quaint boarding house on the other side of town." Rebekah made her contempt perfectly plain in every line which appeared on her face. "I've seen it. It's hardly anything to brag about."

Damon rolled his eyes but didn't bother to flick an equally contempt-filled reply her way.

"Can we get down to business please?" Elijah enquired, taking a seat, his fingers unable to resist dusting down the arms because he seemed to be have an obsession with cleanliness and order that Rebekah had never been able to understand.

"Business..." Kol looked disgusted at the word. "This is fun, brother – a concept that seems to be lost on you." His lips curled at the corners into a smirk which had the ability to both drive girls crazy, and strike fear into the hearts of his enemies. "Did you see the way that little witch looked at me?" He made an immature noise akin to a whooping sound. "She would've burned me with her eyes, if she could've."

Rebekah glared at Kol. "I know that tone of voice, Kol. Leave her alone. We are here for one task, and one task only: to keep the doppelganger safe until our brother breezes into town for the sacrifice ritual."

"I know, but that does not mean we don't get to have a little fun in the meantime," Kol persisted doggedly.

"Perhaps not, but it does mean we have to behave with a little decorum," Elijah insisted, his eyes alight with irritation. "I think we have to assume by the way certainly the Bennett witch and the Gilbert girl was behaving they know what we are, so we must keep our heads down, perhaps let them run with the assumption that Miss Bennett's parlour trick scared us into leaving town."

Rebekah nodded, "I'll go with that."

"Boring," Damon announced, draping himself over the chaise de longue, wearing a lazy expression.

She sped over to him, jabbing him sharply in the chest.

"I don't care what hold my brother has over you, if you don't do this my way, I will rip your heart from your chest and play baseball with it! Do you understand?"

"You're feisty..." he stood up, towering over her, a leer twisting his lips. "Now I know what my brother saw in you..."

She slapped him.

"Don't mention Stefan to me," she snapped, turning on her heels and storming over, rolling her eyes at the sound of Kol making immature noises in the wake of her departure.

She had always considered herself quite the temperamental individual, but her family seemed to ignite her temper more than any other factor in the world. She wasn't sure if it was because they knew her, and knew what buttons to push to get the most volatile reaction out of her, or if it was just down to the fact that they were reminders of what she was, of what she'd become.

Family is a beautiful word, a wonderful concept in theory, but people always seem to forget that your family hold the power to hurt you, and they will damn well use that power if it serves their purpose. They can love you, and raise you to absolutely spectacular heights, but they can drag you to the darkest depths of hell, and chain you to the fires so that you feel pain on every level imaginable. For Rebekah, the latter was always the most apt description of her family. For every good memory they'd given her, a thousand bad ones had spawned from it. They all used her in turn, whether it was for her manipulative nature, the way she could wrap a man around her finger just to lead him like a lamb to the slaughter, or the way she could cut down a hundred enemies with an unmatchable ruthlessness. They may have loved her, in their own ways, but they had this horrible habit of taking advantage of her, or – in Klaus' case especially – breaking her.

She was sick of it to be honest, but she'd been promised by Klaus that if he did this last favour for him, she would be free of him. He wouldn't pursue her if she ran, and he wouldn't go against anybody she gave her heart to. Her freedom would come at the price of a girl's life which, in her brother's terms, wasn't that steep a term to pay.

Still, Rebekah couldn't help but feel a niggle of guilt stemming in the bottom of her heart for a girl whose treacherous ancestors would lead her to an early grave, and she would be handing her to the person who would deliver her to that grave almost on a silver platter. Not that she felt anything but mild contempt for the girl, but all the same it just wasn't right to manipulate and lie your way into someone's life only to end up pushing them towards their death. It just didn't sit right with her, but she had to make herself find a way to be okay with it, because the sound of freedom rang in her ears like an inimitable melody. It wasn't in her nature to not fight for the things she wanted.

Then again, it wasn't in the nature to let her brother have his way either.

...

..

.

Elena fought the urge to vomit.

He'd been right there – her parents' killer.

She was currently holed up in the bathroom, just staring at the mirror, at her own hollow expression, fighting back the waves of nausea which were sweeping over her. Caroline and Bonnie weren't too far away, dealing with their own personal problems – for Caroline, it was slowly sobering up to process up the night's events, and for Bonnie, it was trying to work out what the hell it was she'd done to cause the vampires to back off – so she had a few moments processing the grief and anger which boiled over inside of her.

She wiped away tears which threatened to appear from the corners of her eyes and gritted her teeth at her reflection, pretending for one moment the killer – the monster – was there in front of her, grinning at her whilst making cocky remarks that not only confirmed he'd killed her parents, but he remember doing it; she'd met some monsters who'd killed so many people, they didn't remember the victims they'd been hunted down for murdering.

When she surfaced from the bathroom, she noticed Bonnie was sitting on the couch, staring blankly ahead, her eyes widening as if she'd come to a shocking conclusion about something.

"Bonnie?" Her tone was troubled. "You okay?"

Bonnie shook her head, her bottom lip trembling.

"I think my Grams was right," she whispered, "I think I might be a witch. It's the only way to explain what happened tonight."

"Are you sure? I mean..."

"I made those guys – those things – crumble, Elena. All it took was one angry look and a hell of a lot of rage, but I could feel something being forced out of me. Power... magic...whatever you wanna call it... I felt it. And I couldn't control it." Bonnie shook her head, clearly frightened by what had happened. "The last thing Grams said to me was to guard my strength and not let anybody take advantage of it... I just assumed she'd been drinking." Tears filled her eyes. "And I didn't listen..."

"You couldn't have known..."

"With all that we've witnessed, Elena, I don't know why I doubted her. I had no reason to doubt her. We had to say goodbye to normality a long time ago, so why the hell did I not believe, even for a second that witches could exist?"

Elena supplied the only answer she thought could give a grain of comfort to a clearly shaken Bonnie.

"You could only wrap your head around the idea of vampires and werewolves. We've had to concentrate on dealing with vampires, and the odd werewolf, for so long that the idea of there being a third supernatural entity to deal with was just unthinkable. You can't blame yourself for wanting there to be less supernatural crap to deal with."

"Why is it always the hottest guys who tend to be the biggest creeps?" Caroline bemoaned, stumbling into the living room, shaking her head. "That Kol guy looked so damn attractive. I was ready to get on – " She looked at Bonnie's face. "What? What did I miss?"

"I'm a witch," Bonnie mumbled.

"And don't we all know it?" Caroline couldn't help snidely remarking.

Bonnie glared at her. "I'm a witch, Caroline. That's how I managed to hurt those vampires without touching them."

"That was you?"

"You sound insultingly surprised."

Caroline started floundering, immediately trying to backtrack, but Bonnie had already taken offence and walked off, leaving Elena, once again, to try and repair the damage.

"I need a filter," Caroline decided.

"Kind of," Elena agreed, but linked her arm through Caroline's to show she wasn't really serious. "Bonnie's had a rough night. I think she just needs some space."

"From me?"

"No, from the supernatural... at least until she figures out who she really is." Elena hesitated before adding, "Speaking of which, I saw my parents' killer tonight."

"No!" Caroline looked, touchingly, aggressive. "Which one was it? I'll kill them!"

"The dark haired one with the blue eyes."

"The hot-as-fuck one?" Caroline looked astounded, as if the concept of hot guys being monsters was utterly lost on her. "Oh, Elena...I'm so sorry. Why didn't you kick his ass? I wouldn't have held back if it had been, well, you know..."

"You know protocol: we have to know what we're dealing with before we attack."

"But this is personal."

"That's exactly the reason why we should be even more careful with this, Caroline. If I let my emotions get the better of me, I could get myself killed, and for what? Revenge? My parents raised me better than that."

Caroline gave Elena a hard stare. "But you are going to kill him, right?"

Elena smiled grimly. "Naturally, but it won't be for vengeance, although I will get the satisfaction of sending the person who ruined my life to hell. It'll be because it's the right thing to do."

Her best friend smiled at her.

" Elena Gilbert, Slayer of the Cursed and Damned... It has a nice ring to it."

Bonnie strode back into the room, an air of purpose about her.

"I've just been on the phone to my dad, asking about relatives on my mother's side, and I have a cousin not too far away who might be able to shed some more light on my heritage." She hesitated, before looking from Caroline to Elena. "I hate to leave you guys like this, but..."

In an effort to redeem herself after her snarky remarks, Caroline stepped forward, enveloping Bonnie in her arms.

"Go," she instructed firmly. "We'll be able to handle what's going on here."

"You sure?"

Elena nodded in confirmation. "We'll mostly be doing reconnaissance anyway. Nothing more."

"Wise decision." Bonnie gave them a tight lipped smile laced with a look of approval. "Rebekah's gonna throw a hissy fit..."

"I'll handle her."

"And if Elena can't handle her, I'll ruin one of her oh-so-expensive outfits by accidentally-on-purpose pushing her down a muddy hill," Caroline chipped in, earning her a laugh from Bonnie.

She flung her arms around her friends and held them tightly.

"Be safe," she whispered in their ears.

"I hope you find out what you need to learn. Might be handy to have a witch on our side," Elena joked.

Bonnie smiled. "Well, we'll see. I don't even know for sure I am one, but I do know it wasn't a coincidence what happened tonight. I just need answers, and my Grams isn't here to answer them."

"Go," Caroline repeated. "We love you."

"Love you too," Bonnie said, walking out, throwing them an appreciative glance as she exited their apartment.

"What now?" Caroline asked the moment she was out of earshot.

"Now we do what we always do – we hunt and kill vampire scum," Elena spoke, determination radiating from every syllable she uttered.

Caroline nodded, looking uncharacteristically solemn.

"Where do we begin?"

"Chances are we didn't scare these vampires off. They'll loiter in town, blending in as best they can. I say we play the amnesia card with them. Act like we were too drunk to remember what went down."

"They aren't gonna buy that."

"Ah, you underestimate a vampire's basic need to survive in a town with people aware of their existence. They'll buy our story because they need to buy it. They can't come out and say anything otherwise. It'll out them to the world."

Caroline still didn't look convinced.

"And what if they corner us somewhere private, and try and compel the truth out of us?"

Elena shrugged. "Then we let them believe we can be compelled."

"But they already know we've had vervain before! That's how they couldn't compel me."

"They don't know we're drinking it by choice," Elena pointed out. "It could be someone higher up, for all they know, who has been supplying it to us."

"I don't know about this. We've done the whole bait-'em-and-stake-'em bit before, but those times the vampires were complete idiots, probably newly turned. These guys sounded old, the way they spoke, like they've been around a long time. We can't trust our methods will work with them."

"Then we make new methods," Elena said simply. "We can't let our home be overrun with vampires, Care. Old or new, vampires are dangerous monsters." She smiled nostalgically, adding, "My mom used to tell me that the reason children's tales had monsters in them wasn't to acknowledge the fact that the monsters exist in the world, but that they can be defeated, if you have the knowhow."

"I remember a quote going something along those lines. My dad had a big book of them," Caroline agreed, looking equally as nostalgic. "God, I miss him so much."

"We need to stack up on weapons, start dividing the vervain between us," she said determinedly. "Maybe we can start delving it out to the town somehow."

"Your mom still has that bracelet you made her right?"

"Never takes it off. I made sure to have a hissy fit every time she tried to," Caroline said, with a degree of pride at her own skills at feigning tantrums to guilt trip her mom into doing anything she wanted.

"Good..." Elena sounded just as determined as Caroline. "Now, how about we have another night out? Maybe we could slip vervain into people's drinks as we do so?"

"Nah, if we get caught it's gonna take a hell of an explanation to convince them we're not trying to roofie people."

"We have to protect the town somehow while we figure out what these guys are up to!" Elena said in frustration. "I won't let someone else go through what we did."

Caroline put her hands on Elena's shoulders.

"We won't let them hurt anyone," she soothed. "We just have to figure out who they are and what they're up to. It's the usual drill, just without Bonnie."

"We need to get Rebekah up to speed."

Caroline made a face. "Do we have to?"

Giving out a short laugh, Elena nodded, making a mock pained expression as she replied, "We kind of do, yes. She's part of our team, regardless of how you feel about her."

"I really, really hate her though."

Elena wanted to say she did too, just to show solidarity, but that wasn't entirely true. Maybe it was just the way she saw things in shades of grey, as opposed to black and white the way Caroline seemed to view the world, but she couldn't entirely agree with her friend's sentiments regarding Rebekah. Sure, the blonde was cold, liberal with her cruel taunts, and made their lives miserable on a daily basis, but there was something warm there, lingering on the fringes of her cold heart, and Elena found herself drawn to it.

She couldn't explain it, even to herself, but she knew there was more to Rebekah than what met the eye, and she was eager to find out more, if only to justify her mother's favourite adage 'never judge a book by its cover'.

Always seeing the best in people, she could imagine her mother sighing from the other side – if there even was one – that's my girl.

Even just imagining her mother's presence in this scenario made a small smile curl Elena's lips, but once she saw her mother in the peripherals of her mind, she saw her father, grave but with eyes which seemed to do nothing but laugh, and then she saw Jeremy, and that's when the emotions raged inside her, threatening to overtake her.

It was thinking about Jeremy that always, always pushed her over the edge. Thinking back on that day was just like revisiting an old nightmare over and over again. Even now, the events slipped into her mind, the memory equivalent to dark clouds ruining a vividly blue sky, the threat of rain ever present.

.

..

...

Five years after their parents had been killed by a wild animal, Elena and Jeremy had assembled a life for themselves, with the pair of them at Whitmore college, both of them in different years, both majoring in different fields, both determined to stay together. After their parents had died, they'd had their aunt Jenna come to live with them, and though she'd loved them, and fought for them, the moment they'd left for college, she'd gone back to finish her own degree so she could have her own life back. Elena had always had the feeling Jenna had felt like she was meant to be a parent to them, and because of that overwhelming role, she'd felt like she'd failed, hence the whole running-back-to-her-old-life-the-moment-they-were-old-enough-took-after-themselves bit.

She needn't have worried, Elena often thought; she'd done a hell of a job, and because she'd been both a fun aunt and almost another Gilbert sibling at times, she'd gotten them all through graduating high school and into college, even though Jeremy had gone through several phases of using drugs and just tuning out the world.

It was now approaching the end of her final year at college, and Elena was excited beyond belief to graduate and go onto pastures new. The house had been left to her, as stipulated by her parents' will, so after college she'd made plans to live at home for a while until she found a job that took her to exciting places. Jeremy had made no such plans, insisting when he graduated with an art degree under his belt, he planned to leave and never come back, except perhaps for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The biggest party of the year, the end of year parties to end all end of year parties, was in full swing when she arrived, an eager Caroline and Bonnie next to her, the two of them having come to visit from their prospective colleges.

"This is awesome," Caroline declared, eyeing the array of attractive individuals in front of her. "My college has nothing like this."

"So why'd ya pick it?"

"Duh, so I could use my fantastic and legendary organisational skills to improve it," Caroline quipped. "But it took me the full three years to persuade them to even start having committees for events, and even then they used a crappy democratic system to elect individuals onto that committee and I didn't get a damn role in the thing even though it was MY IDEA!"

"Let's get a drink in you," Bonnie suggested, tugging Caroline away just as she'd started to rant about more of the college's inadequacies. "Meet you inside?"

"Yeah, see you in a minute. Gonna nip up to Jeremy's dorm room, see if he's okay."

With that, they separated, Elena navigating her way through the crowd of vivacious partygoers to reach the building Jeremy was located in. For some reason, his building was deserted, most of the students presumably at the party, so she walked inside, feeling an inexplicable chill in the air, like she was being watched or something. Something didn't feel quite right anyway.

Walking up the stairs, she reached Jeremy's dorm room, knocking once before letting herself in, only for a scene from a horror movie to greet her eyes the moment she'd opened the door.

A man with lengthy dark hair was gripping her brother, his teeth plunging into his neck, blood spattered across his mouth, a great gaping hole visible on the side of her brother's neck where – presumably – he'd had a great chunk of flesh ripped out.

She didn't remember screaming, but it had stopped the man in his tracks, who'd dropped her brother to the floor, and all she'd been able to think of in that moment was that Jeremy's eyes weren't supposed to be fixed open like that; no thoughts of her own safety had ever crossed her mind. The sounds of the party must've been loud that no one had thought to come rushing to her aid, but to her own ears it sounded a million miles away.

The monster stalked towards her, not even having the courtesy to wipe her brother's blood, and then sped towards her at an inhuman speed. His teeth pierced her own neck, drawing blood after blood, like he'd been starved of it for so long; he drew so much that she began to feel dizzy and light headed, collapsing onto her knees which didn't seem to stop him. There was a point where she knew he didn't physically need the blood he was taking, that he was literally killing her to silence her, and her eyes rolled back before she could make any sort of sound, weak or otherwise, to protest what was happening.

She was vaguely aware of the sound of voices before she felt the grip on her slacken, her body crumbling into a pile as it struggled to come to terms with how much blood it had lost.

Later, she woke up in hospital next to a teary eyed and frightened Bonnie and Caroline, who informed her she'd at one point she'd flat-lined.

Jeremy hadn't survived, but she'd known that; the dull pulse of her grieving heart had told her all she needed to know.

Nearly dying, however, had brought to light one other important matter, which she reflected on a lot later on so as not to scare her friends, and that had been the true nature of her parents' deaths. She knew by now at least two monsters – for she'd been able to identify them as two separate beasts, even in the blurred confinements of her grieving mind – existed in the world, and that meant the existence of possibly hundreds more.

Not long afterwards, she dropped out of college, unable to find the energy to continue while her heart was under this massive strain to continue beating whilst the hearts of her family didn't. She moved back home and started researching vampires, determined to fight back, and it wasn't long afterwards that Caroline and Bonnie also suffered traumas which united them all in fighting things that went bump in the night.

She kept her scars though, as a reminder of the true darkness the world possessed. It wouldn't be the last time she would be bitten by a vampire, but it would be the occasion which defined her, forcing her into an entirely new world she could barely comprehend. Her dreams would from that day on be laced with flashes of teeth, with the added soundtrack of a bloodcurdling scream that could've woken the dead.

...

..

.

At the Grill, Caroline and Elena fanned out, both wearing revealing dresses, not particularly to draw attention but because they found as a rule, whether they were vampires or not, men tended to drop their guards in the presence of attractive females. They couldn't resist flirting, even if they had no shot in hell at walking away with those females.

To nobody's surprise, they drew attention left, right and centre, with men who very rarely frequented town eyeing them with undisguised lust. Clad in a violet dress with a plunging neckline, Elena smirked as she flicked her hair, seeking out her prey through autumn brown eyes, eyes that never failed to get men to fall in love with her. Over on her left, she saw Caroline, who wore a short black number, which couldn't help contrasting with her lily white legs which seemed to stretch for miles, smiling and making the occasional comment to a guy she passed, and they were lapping up her attention like dogs.

This routine was part of their reconnaissance, although she suspected they'd done it so many times, they were starting to wear it out a little. It mostly involved flirting their asses off until they got a solid lead of some kind. Sometimes it backfired, like the night Bonnie had almost been attacked by a vampire who seemed to have developed an obsession with taking her home – presumably to feed on and kill, but there were other possibilities that still made her shudder to this day.

As she made her way to the bar, she bristled, aware someone was watching her – well, for a different reason than the dozens of other idiots who occupied this bar. She turned a fraction to the right, spotting a pair of icy blue eyes fixed on her, and without hesitation she turned back.

No need to revisit that horrific encounter just yet, she thought, ordering herself a strong drink, knowing she would need it.

An arm stretched across the bar before she could pay for her drink, money slipping from the hand attached to it to the hand of the bartender. She gave a sideways glance at the generous – and she used that word loosely – man responsible for buying her a drink, vaguely surprised to see it was the suited individual who'd tried to restrain his younger brother when he'd been harassing them.

She took a look at him now they were in a well lit environment, noting the fact even in a bar environment, a place which was notorious for throwing all rules of basic civility out of the window, he still wore a suit. He was good looking she wasn't going to deny that, with his soft brown looks, a strand of it falling across his face, making him look like a pop star from the 80s. But Elena from experience knew not to trust men who looked as though they had stepped straight out of magazines; it wasn't that the less attractive ones couldn't do the same kind of emotional – and often physical – damage, but she found the ones who were attractive, and knew they were attractive, flaunted their attraction in a bid to get people's attention, and then became dangerous on the odd occasion they were rejected.

"Good evening," he said, a soothing lilt to his voice. "I know I'm being presumptuous by buying you a drink, but consider it an apology for the way my brother behaved last night."

"I barely recall last night," she lied. "If he acted like a jackass, it's nothing I'm not used to, believe me." It was hard as hell not to stake him right there and then; he spoke like he'd been around a thousand years, and she was willing to bet he had. "I'm Elena."

She extended a hand, deciding to be polite, disguising her true intentions under a mask she'd perfected for herself over the years. Out of the corner of her eyes, she noted Caroline observing her, a look of concern engraved onto her features. With a discreet signal – one they'd come up with together in the form of tucking a strand of hair behind her ear – she told her she was okay and then turned her attention back to the man who appeared to be studying her.

"Elijah," he returned, taking her hand and kissing it.

Elena wasn't sure why, but the gesture spooked her. It was like an outspoken confirmation of his true age, because she was aware no one pulled the whole kiss-on-the-hand trick these days. In today's society, a kiss on the hand equated to a clumsy kiss on the cheek, which, in some cases, turned into a quick grope.

She shook her head, banishing these weird thoughts from her head. They were too distracting.

"So, Elijah," she practically purred his name, curious to see if he would take the bait she offered. "What brings you to Mystic Falls?"

"Let's just say I am here scouting for a potential home for me and my siblings to settle down in," he replied smoothly.

Liar, she thought, but there was a note of sincerity to his voice which made her wonder whether he was looking for a home, just lying about the location. It was possible; vampires could occasionally tell you the truth but cleverly disguise it in a well prepared lie to set you off your guard. They knew how to play a game, which was partly the reason she, Bonnie and Caroline took lengthy amounts of time to properly come to the conclusion someone was a vampire. They had to be sure.

"Siblings – as in, more than one?" she enquired, inwardly freaking out about the fact that there were more monsters to hunt and catch, presuming of course they were also in town.

"Four to be exact," he confirmed with a tight smile. "I wish I could say Kol was the black sheep of the family, but we seem to be a family made entirely of black sheep, so," he made a lazy gesture with his hand, "I can only re-iterate how sorry I am for the comments he made to you and your friends last night."

Elena didn't respond, not entirely sure how she could respond to such a bizarre answer.

Luckily, Caroline made her grand entrance, smiling brightly at Elijah.

"Hi," she greeted, beaming in his direction. "I'm Caroline."

Elena watched Elijah process her, his mouth twisting into an uncertain smile, almost like he wasn't quite sure how to respond to such a loud and enthusiastic greeting, and then his phone rang, prompting him to apologise profusely, explaining he had to take the call, before disappearing from view.

"What an oddball," Caroline noted.

"You're telling me," Elena agreed.

"Observations?"

"He talks like he's from a different time, and he has a bizarrely bleak view on his own family. Oh – he has other siblings by the way. If they're not in town already, they will be. He claims he's looking for a permanent home for all of them."

Caroline raised a hand, "I call bullshit."

Elena smiled. "Me too. There's no concrete proof he is a vampire though."

"He's related to that jackass who tried to compel us – that's concrete proof enough for me!"

"We need to play this carefully, Caroline. We don't know enough to make a definite move," Elena cautioned. "Let's take this one day at a time. We should go drop by Rebekah's house and get her up to speed."

"Okay," Caroline said, surprisingly non-resistant to the idea of seeing Rebekah. "But only because she has a ridiculous amount of alcohol in her house. That'll get me through a conversation with her."

Elena grinned.

"Caroline Forbes, did I ever tell you how much I love you?"

Caroline grinned back.

"No, so you should really start," she teased. "Get me Channing Tatum for Christmas. That'll really show me that you love me."

Elena bumped her playfully, rolling her eyes good-humouredly.

That was Caroline Forbes for you, and she wouldn't change her for the world.


	5. Hidden Agendas

"Are you absolutely sure?"

Caroline narrowed her eyes.

"Are you seriously questioning what we're saying? It's all there in black and white!"

"No, it isn't. Let's look at the evidence you've presented so far: a man perhaps getting a little too close for comfort, presumably inebriated given how you two spent your evening up until that point, and the extensive vocabulary of a man who probably – and this might sound farfetched, but just go with it here – went to college. But, no you're probably right: that is concrete evidence to suggest he's been around for centuries."

Caroline threw her hands up in the air, exasperated.

"You could just say you don't believe us, rather than being an absolute bitch about it," she retorted.

"I find sarcasm tends to convey that message better than simply stating that point," Rebekah cheerily countered. "Nonetheless, my point still stands: you're speculating based on observations you made whilst under the influence. Even your reconnaissance produced nothing solid for me to do anything with." She took a sip of her drink and stirred the ice cubes with her straw, her cold eyes bouncing from Caroline – who currently wore a furious expression at having her word doubted – to Elena – who looked just as angry but with a faint resigned expression lurking underneath, as if she knew she was right but was too proud to admit it. "Don't get pissed at me because you know I'm right."

"You're the one who always tells us to follow our instincts, Rebekah, and mine right now is screaming that these guys are bad news," Elena argued.

"Newsflash, Elena: men can be considered bad news even in human form," Rebekah snapped. "In fact, I'd argue with a few exceptions, the worst of men are human simply because they don't have their humanity switched off yet still find it within them to commit acts of unspeakable atrocity. You could've just had a bad vibe from them. It happens. Just avoid them."

Caroline made a disgusted sound before launching into one of her famous rants, which nowadays always seemed to be directed towards Rebekah.

"That's the advice you give us? Avoid them?" she snapped. "What if they are actually vampires – and I'm more than certain that they are – and they kill someone? Could you live with that on your conscience? I couldn't."

Rebekah rose fluently to her feet so that she stood level with Caroline, the two of them locked in a silent battle which had been raging for a long time and was only now coming to a head. She couldn't help but admire the girl's spirit and feistiness, but it was making having a civil conversation increasingly difficult. Internally, she was panicking, resenting her brothers for giving away their game so early, but she could still stall Elena and Caroline's efforts in hunting them down. She was a master manipulator and could weave a pretty story that could get even the most sceptical of individuals buying her every word.

"You need more evidence," she repeated. "I've always taught you to follow your instincts, yes, but you also need to be accurate with who you label as monster. People can be incredibly deceiving, and if you go around acting on these so-called instincts of yours, staking everyone you deem to be a vampire, you might one day take it too far, and that is something you can never take back."

She felt like those words, the ones she was uttering, weighed too heavily on her tongue as she spoke them. They just felt too appropriate for her own situation, and judging by the way Elena was looking at her, she felt like they were going to come back and haunt her.

"So we gather more evidence and then we go in and kill them," Elena clarified, looking momentarily appeased by the fact she wasn't dismissing their claim, merely demanding authentication of them. "Is that right?"

"You need to be crafty. Work out their habits, their weaknesses, explore their vulnerabilities... and then use them to formulate your plan to kill them," Rebekah corrected. "You cannot go into this impulsively – and I cannot believe I even have to tell you this."

"She makes sense," Elena admitted to Caroline.

"I guess," Caroline blew out, still looking disgruntled. "Why aren't you being more proactive with vampire slaying anyway?" she suddenly demanded, glaring in Rebekah's direction.

"I have been chasing down potential leads for you to chase," Rebekah said coolly, producing a couple of folders to hand out to a startled Elena and Caroline. "Some of us see the bigger picture; you know, what goes on beyond Mystic Falls. Your cosy little town isn't the entire world you know, nor is it the sole habitat where vampires dwell."

Elena opened the folder, gazing at the array of photos and files with a degree of awe.

"How'd you get these?"

"Compiled them in my sleep, which is more than what you two seem to be doing these days," Rebekah sniped, deciding attack was the best mode of defence, and it would deflect unnecessary attention into her activities. "These are all genuine vampires. I've scoped them out, checked their identities, and they all are definite night crawlers. Enjoy."

"These are all in the same area," Caroline noticed, looking disturbed. "New Orleans."

"New Orleans is crawling with vampires," Rebekah confirmed. "That's why I'm sending you lovely ladies to exterminate the pests, so to speak. Sanitise the city, if you like."

She'd received this list from her brother, who, aside from plotting sacrifice rituals, also harboured the desire to reclaim his 'kingdom' in the city of New Orleans. She couldn't help but think fondly of her days in the beautiful city, and it really had felt like a home of sorts, where she and her siblings had coexisted remarkably peacefully given their clashing personalities. Though her brother had ordered her to keep the doppelganger safe and in Mystic Falls, she couldn't help but elect to help her brother in one other way by eliminating his competition to reclaim his city. If anyone could take down those vampires without them even seeing it coming, it was – and she had to admit this even though she was very reluctant to – Caroline and Elena, even despite the fact they were easily the two most confusing and annoying humans she'd come across in a long time.

This plan of hers had two advantages: one, it would lure Caroline and Elena out of Mystic Falls, giving her enough time to ensure her brothers and the Salvatores stayed out of trouble, and two, it would eliminate some of the competition (she was not naive to think they could take them all out; certainly not Marcel anyway) and would perhaps win favour from her brother so that once this wretched ritual was over and done with, he could leave her in peace.

Rebekah craved freedom like a blind man craved his sight. Having had it stripped from her for so long – for her own good, she believed her brother's exact words had been – she'd forgotten what it felt like to do things based on her own agenda, and not part of some bigger scheme where she really didn't give a damn about the outcome. It seemed ridiculous that someone of her status would even need to barter for freedom, but her brother's hold on her had span centuries, and his grip on her was toxic but strong enough that she couldn't escape. He would've found her anywhere anyway; he possessed all the connections to make it impossible for her to flee in any direction.

"I can't take this job, not while Mystic Falls is in danger," Elena said, shaking her head.

Rebekah narrowed her eyes.

"I'm sorry, did I hear you actually just decline an opportunity to hunt down some actual vampires, as opposed to the imaginary ones you've made up?"

Elena took a step forward, taking over Caroline's spot in front of Rebekah's ice cold gaze. She clenched her fists, infuriated by Rebekah's insinuation that her allegations of there being vampires in Mystic Falls were false. Up this close to her, Elena could identify features she'd never quite noticed before, such as the faint freckles underlining Rebekah's skin tone, freckles she was sure only bloomed under intense sunlight. She couldn't help picturing a freckled Rebekah, and the image which came to mind actually looked pleasant, beautiful even. Also, from this distance she could see how intense a shade of blue her eyes were, like the shallowest parts of the warmest ocean.

Once upon a time, in happier times, Elena had envisioned her ideal partner having blue eyes. There was something about people who possessed them she felt instinctively drawn to; maybe it was because blue was just one of those colours which is pretty in every shade. Blue happened to be her favourite colour too, which for some reason seemed to surprise people whenever they asked.

"We have a potential lead in Mystic Falls," she pointed out, trying to avoid honing in on Rebekah's eyes. "Why would we ignore that?"

"You have no proof," Rebekah hissed. "You attack them and they don't turn out to be vampires, you are murderers, and the media will have a field day hunting your asses down. Be smart, for once in your goddamn lives."

Elena narrowed her eyes, fully tempted to slap Rebekah, finally understanding Caroline's hatred of the woman; she was completely stubborn, a little self-righteous too, and she seemed to be such a damn know-it-all too. That added up to a personality which was making her suffer from whiplash trying to keep up with all her different moods.

To her surprise though, Caroline agreed with Rebekah.

"She's right," she said – albeit reluctantly. "We have no proof as of this moment." It was a sign of their solid friendship that she didn't mention Elena's connection with Damon, sensing – rightly – that she didn't want that made public knowledge, even as evidence to use to prove their allegations correct. "It wouldn't hurt for us to hunt down some actual vampire scum... you know, hone our skills so we have it down to a fine art."

"That is the first sensible thing you've ever said," Rebekah remarked drolly.

"Shut up," Caroline snapped. "I said you were right; get over it."

Rebekah held her hands up in mock surrender, a smirk gracing her thin pink lips.

"But..." Elena deflated, sensing there was no point in arguing against the two of them. "Fine." She flicked through the file out of only vague curiosity, perhaps also out of a need to avoid Rebekah's triumphant look. "So...New Orleans?"

"It's crawling with vampires," Rebekah confirmed. "I haven't tackled it myself because..." she hesitated, wondering whether she could divulge even a little of the truth just to bat away some of the questions she knew Caroline in particular would fling her way. "I have history there. Unpleasant history. I've avoided the whole city for a long time."

Curiosity burned in the corners of Elena's eyes but she avoided probing any further. There was a lot she didn't know about Rebekah, a lot she probably didn't want to know to be honest, and she'd always had this policy of being as forthcoming with personal information to other people as they were to her. Rebekah had given her little information to chew on over the time they'd spent together, and so she'd made sure to supply very little in return. It was a sort of quid pro quo situation, except they never really got anything out of this nonverbal agreement except this mutual distrust which never wavered.

"Piece of advice," Rebekah suddenly added, as if the thought had only just occurred to her. "I know your usual tactic is to attack at night, but trust me, with these guys you're gonna want to take them in the day."

"Why?" Caroline asked, looking puzzled.

"Just trust me," Rebekah said, ignoring the question.

"I would except you make it so easy for us to do the exact opposite," Caroline muttered, before turning on her heel and storming out, evidently having decided she'd had enough of her Rebekah quota for the day.

Elena stood there, staring at the pictures in front of her, not for the first time surprised by how much they resembled ordinary people. If these photos had been placed in front of her, she would not have been able to identify them as monsters, and that was the most frightening thing about vampires: they could look like anyone. There was no discernible way of telling a vampire from a human, not unless you flooded the world with vervain soaked water just to see who survived unscathed and who came up with burned flesh, screaming in agony.

Maybe that was the frightening thing about vampires; not that they could run up to incredible speeds, or shred your skin with their fangs, but that they looked so deceivingly human that you never saw the monster under the skin until it was too late.

She'd been fooled by a vampire's good looks, hell, even by his charm, and so she'd vowed never to let appearances fool her ever again. You never knew who was masquerading as a monster; in fact, the general rule of thumb seemed to be the more attractive the individual, the uglier their true identity seemed to be.

She could feel Rebekah's stare burning a hole in the side of her head, and that prompted her to start following Caroline out of the house, although her movements were sluggish, and she couldn't help feeling uneasy, as if there was another motivation entirely behind Rebekah suddenly presenting this mission to her and Caroline. It felt very much like being pushed away from Mystic Falls in order for something else to happen.

Again, this was a hypothesis she couldn't seem to prove, but Elena made a mental note to keep alerted on the town's activities while she and Caroline checked out the situation in New Orleans. Bonnie was otherwise engaged with coming to terms with her own identity, so they could hardly ask her to keep watch, but maybe she could involve Matt somehow? She didn't particularly want to speak to him, but perhaps in a feigned attempt at building the bridges between them she could ask him to do her a favour and keep an eye on the town.

This paranoia is preventing you from living your life you know, her mind scolded her.

Well, this crack which constantly threatens to break me in two is a firm reminder of what happens when you let your guard down, her heart retorted. Better to be paranoid and live the rest of your life in fear than let your walls crumble and watch as twisted individuals take advantage of that to ruin your life.

"You know we can't leave this town right?" Caroline's voice cut across Elena's thoughts, pretty much mirroring her own thoughts. "I know I agreed with her, but that was just a lie... obviously. You know we can't leave until we know what those guys are up to."

"I know what you mean," Elena said wearily. "But we can't go behind Rebekah's back. Maybe it would be better if we hunted down some actual vampires, at least until we know how to proceed here. She's right in that department..."

"Oh my god, Elena!" Caroline exploded. "What is it with your weird and twisted loyalty to her? She's never treated us any better than the dirt underneath her designer shoes, so why are you pretending she deserves our loyalty?"

"There are enough monsters in this world capable of betraying us without us girls doing it to each other," Elena said coolly, before pulling a Caroline and walking away without seeing how her radical statement had gone down with her friends.

She couldn't explain this strange feeling she had about Rebekah. The woman was an enigma, and she kept her emotions behind this thick ice wall no one could break through, but sometimes there was a flash of something real which immediately intrigued Elena. Maybe she just couldn't help connecting with people who'd endured tragedy in their lives and dealt with it by putting up a front designed to push people away. After Jeremy's death, that was how she'd coped with the grief and the unbearable agony of having to go on without any family; she'd only allowed herself to talk meaningfully and sincerely to the people she'd known and loved a long time – when dealing with everyone else, she'd displayed false smiles and accepted the flood of pity with a manufactured sense of grace and humility she'd not truly felt.

Even though Caroline had lost her father, there was no sense of shared grief between herself and Elena, because the losses they'd endured had been on two separate scales, and they'd dealt with the grief in different ways. Initially, Caroline had taken her father's death very hard, and, ironically, given her personality, she'd refused to see anybody because she hadn't been able to look anyone in the eye without bursting into tears. That phase had lasted all of three days before she'd bounced back, channelling her grief into constructive action just to take her mind off of it all.

With Elena, she'd let soaked the pain up like a sponge, but had barely released her emotion. She'd cried, raged, vented, but most of her bitter emotions had been stored for future use, because at the time she'd believed firmly that moving on as swiftly as possible was the better course of action. Less hassle, less drama, and it meant if she could fool the world with a smile that she was okay, maybe she might will that into becoming reality. As such, it had meant over the years that pain had multiplied inside of her to the point where she knew it could one day destroy her, and so she'd needed an outlet to take out all her anger and sadness so that it didn't consume her.

Being a vampire hunter had a twofold purpose: it eliminated the world of monsters one at a time, and it eliminated the heartache of being alive when her family weren't one day at a time.

It was a win-win situation which somehow unequivocally never actually felt like a win no matter which way you looked at it.

.

..

...

Rebekah strode purposefully towards the abandoned outhouse located in the middle of the Mystic Falls woods. Her brother stood there, cocky as ever, wearing a smirk which she had an inexplicable urge to smack off his baby face, accompanied by Damon, who looked unsurprisingly bored.

"Okay, I'm here. What was so urgent?" she demanded, letting her cold eyes flitter from one to the other.

"Elijah did a little digging on the girls and turns out they each have a very interesting history," Kol informed her smugly. "The witch comes from a long line of very powerful witches, and if she learns just how powerful her ancestry is, it could be very dangerous for us." He looked unfazed despite the fact he'd virtually told her they were all likely to be doomed. "The Forbes girl... well..." he made a face, "... didn't actually learn anything interesting about her. It's her family really you wanna check out. Whole line of vampire hunters. Kinda makes you wonder how much the Forbes girl really knows about her family, but Damon is all over this particular subject, aren't you mate?"

"I'm getting all cosy with her mother as we speak," Damon drawled. "Like most girls, she cannot resist the Salvatore charm – charm my brother decidedly lacks – and is probably very likely to fall head over heels in love with me, but what can you do?"

"So I take it she's either blind or raving mad then?" Rebekah threw at him, relishing the look of moment dislike which passed across his features.

She'd felt a moment of attraction towards him the moment she'd first seen him, but after he'd opened his mouth a couple of times, she'd soon lost interest. Better fish in the sea and all that...

"Told you my sister's bite is worse than her bark, mate," Kol remarked to Damon, whilst keeping his eyes on his sister, grinning widely.

"What about Elena? What did you glean about her family?" Rebekah cut across them both impatiently.

"I killed her parents," Damon said bluntly. "Her astounding resemblance to Katherine was all that kept me from ending her too. I thought I'd compelled her to forget my little visit, but evidently from her reaction to seeing me I think she remembers." He made a face. "Oops."

"That's all you can say?" Rebekah made a disgusted noise. "My cover is potentially about to be blown, firstly because you idiots let my arrogant bastard brother order you into town in the first place, and secondly, you're now telling me one of the few people in the world who could potentially have the capacity to kill us actually recognises one of you jackasses, and all you can say is oops?" She pinched the ridge of her nose in irritation. "And here I thought the rumour was that the Salvatores were smart."

Damon made a move as if he was going to attack her but Kol threw an arm in front of him, presenting him with a warning glare that instantly reminded Rebekah that her family, though moronic and reckless at the best of times, could still surprise her and step up when it counted.

"Have you heard from Nik?" she asked, changing the subject as it was becoming blatantly obvious the friendship Kol and Damon had struck up seemed to be completely manufactured, with no traces of actual camaraderie existing between them.

"He's called Elijah to ascertain the situation," Kol replied. "He said he's almost ready to call into town, he just needs to find the moonstone, which, according to him, is frustratingly hard to find."

"He's only had a thousand years to prepare for this. You would've thought he would've been all ready to go," Rebekah remarked sarcastically, irritated with Klaus for numerous reasons which seemed to spawn into tinier trivialities she could've done without thinking about.

"That's our dear brother for you: always ill prepared despite the fact he's been harping on about this bloody sacrifice ritual since the moment he first heard of it."

"As much as I'd love to watch this particular re-run of the Jerry Springer Show: Mikaelson style..." Damon lazily remarked, "...I have a brother to coerce into being my helpful minion if we're going to actually have a snowball's chance in hell of pulling this all off."

"Where is your infernal brother anyway? He could've at least had the courtesy to say hello to me?" Rebekah asked, no longer concerned with the younger and decidedly kinder Salvatore brother but still curious despite herself.

"Pursuing other feisty blondes of course," Damon sneered. "You didn't think your train wreck of a relationship might be something he wanted to repeat...did you? Oh, that's so sad..."

"And people wonder why I didn't go for you," she threw back at him. "You're attractive enough, it's just a shame your toxic personality ruins the rest of you."

Damon gave a contemptuous laugh, threw Kol a dark glance as if blaming him for his sister's ability to knock insults out of the park with a few choice words of her own, and then disappeared in a blur.

"He never changes," she said darkly, shaking her head.

"Neither do you, dear sis," Kol reminded her playfully.

"True," she conceded. "So you've actually spoke to Nik then? The arse seems to be avoiding any of my calls."

"It's nothing personal, Rebekah. He's always been a selfish, heartless, egotistical maniac who preaches about the importance of family yet always seems to lock his members in boxes with daggers through their chests the moment they disappoint or disagree with him. He's always been like that."

Rebekah chose not to respond, her mind taking her back to a stormy night a thousand years ago, back when their family had been even more disjointed, ironically as they'd all been cooped up together. She recalled a young Niklaus, who'd had only compassion in his eyes and a drive to make his father proud – an impossible mission, given the fact their father had been a cold bully who barely showed any affection for anyone, even his own wife – who'd sat up all night with her, telling stories to keep her mind away from the storm. That was the brother she chose to remember whenever her heart and mind both pleaded with her to walk away from him for good.

The unthinkable act he was forcing her to commit here wasn't the reason she currently found it so tempting to just disappear forever, although it tore heavily at the remnants of a conscience she still had retained after all these years.

She was disappointed that even when he rallied his family together, it was still all about him.


	6. Family Business

Elena and Caroline sat in the car surveying the beautiful, if slightly eerie, city of New Orleans. It was dark, and they had parked near the borders, on a quiet slip of a road in the hopes of formulating a good plan to hunt and kill the vampires that leeched off the good citizens here.

"I've always wanted to see this place," Caroline murmured. "I'd just hoped to see it under better circumstances."

Elena reached out and squeezed her hand. "Me too."

Leaning her head back against her seat, Caroline sighed heavily.

"Do you ever worry that we're missing a lot doing what we do?" she asked quietly. "I mean, we're making a difference by killing the monsters in the world, but what are we becoming in the process?"

"We didn't ask for this, Caroline, but our family was taken from us. Vampires destroyed our lives. Why should we let them continue to exist when they will only hurt more people?" Elena's eyes flashed with anger as she recalled the horrific moment she'd watched her parents and brother die. "You of all people should know why we're doing this."

"I know, I know... But we shouldn't forget to live while we're doing what we do," Caroline replied, staring ahead.

The city was beautiful. Even though they had no vampire hearing, they could faintly hear the sounds of people cheering and laughing, the whole city alight, with music - jazz predominantly - flooding the air, making them realise some sort of celebration was occurring, which they were strangely jealous of.

They'd not been a part of a celebration in a long time, so focused had they all been on hunting and killing vampires. Birthdays had been missed, friendships had been neglected, and it was only just now that Elena and Caroline realised what they were truly missing out on by focusing on vengeance.

Ahead, Elena focused on the flashlights which you could see piercing the sky. They moved periodically, as if lighting the way for something. She closed her eyes, focusing on the music, tapping her fingers against her thighs subconsciously, and she realised the truth of Caroline's words. New Orleans was definitely on her list of places to visit, but it was somewhere she'd never believed she'd ever go. Usually, Bonnie and Caroline and herself would strike little towns that were at least within a couple hours travel where they'd heard rumours of vampires encroaching; they'd never ventured anywhere glamorous or particularly far, which was why, despite how irritable it made her that Rebekah was right, she was thankful to be here, looking at a city that positively glowed with culture.

In an effort to clear her own head, Elena elected to change the subject.

"Rebekah said it was better for us to attack during the day," she said. "I think the best thing for us to do here is reverse our usual strategy."

"Explore the territory tonight, and attack in the day once we know what we're up against." Caroline nodded. "Got it."

"She said we need to be smart with these vampires. They run the city, which means there is most likely a score of them," Elena sighed.

"I wish Bonnie were here."

"Me too, but she needs to check out so she can figure out who she is. Have you heard from her at all?"

Caroline shook her head. "I just had the one text this morning, just letting me know she's okay."

Elena nodded. "Ready to do this?"

Caroline grinned. "Are vampires the scum of the earth?"

As one they chorused, "Yes", and then laughed.

"I can't believe I didn't pick a better outfit to go exploring in," Caroline bemoaned, looking at her white frilled top and her mid-length skirt with a frown. "This doesn't scream vampire-hunters-on-a-mission."

"Exactly. It's not supposed to give us away."

"It doesn't exactly scream sex-on-legs either," Caroline added mournfully.

Elena rolled her eyes and smiled.

"You can create that look with one smile, Caroline Forbes, so don't pretend it's all in the outfit." She looped her arm around her friend. "I know we're going to be checking out this city for any weaknesses, any dodgy characters, but that does not excuse you sneaking off with the first man you see who makes you weak at the knees, got it?"

"You're as bossy as Rebekah."

"And don't you forget it."

They stepped out of the car almost in synch, their boots hitting the ground with an ominous thud. Locking the car, Elena gave it a once over with an almost regretful glance; it would be a shame to walk away from this car, especially since it had given them a lot of memories. However, she and Caroline had made this rule between them that every time they went out on a big hunt, they would never leave in the same car they'd driven up in. It eradicated a possible means of being traced had they ever left any survivors or witnesses - which they rarely did. This car had seen them through a few scrapes, and she would be sad to let it go but it was necessary for survival. She wasn't particularly proud of the fact that they had to steal cars as part of their job - even if those cars did belong to the vampires they killed and no one else - and even less proud she'd honed the skill of breaking into cars like she was a common thief, but at the end of the day they had to be smart.

They walked forward, preparing themselves to commit to the part. Each time they arrived in town, they had new characters. One occasion, they had been sorority girls looking for a good time on a college campus; on another occasion, they'd been three unemployed, destitute girls seeking a place to call home. Each act won them the hearts of every vampire they met - male and female - and they befriended them rather quickly, which made ending them rather the more painful as, despite themselves, the three vampire hunters found that they genuinely connected to some of the people they'd later killed.

Of course, it all had to be an act. Vampires can no longer play the part of humans than a wolf can act the role of a sheep, but it doesn't mean they can't wear the disguise and try their luck all the same, and underneath every one beat the heart of a monster that needed eradicating. If Elena was ever in doubt of her cause, all she had to do was close her eyes and her brother's vacant eyes would loom over her, causing her to bolt up, sweating profusely, and then the doubt would disappear.

This act, Caroline and Elena had decided, would be two simple city girls exploring the world, and looking for a good time. They'd dressed for the occasion, showing enough cleavage to not be regarded as anything other than party girls, but covered up enough to be able to kick ass if needed. Giggling randomly, they began to enter the streets, mingling with the crowds who were celebrating god knows what, all the while gazing around in search of potential targets.

The music was loud and so were the celebrators, but the culture here was on a whole new level and Elena found herself entranced by it all. Having been brought up in a world where culture was defined by pageants and pretentious traditions, Elena and Caroline were genuinely in awe of what it truly meant to be amongst true culture and soon they found that they weren't just dancing as part of the act; they were dancing because it felt good to cut loose.

Caroline looped an arm around Elena and they swung each other around, laughing and revelling in the beauty of where they were. People waved from balconies, streamers and banners decorating the streets like it was Mardi Gras, and they waved back, beaming as they found themselves, for the first time in a long time, genuinely enjoying themselves. Caroline even risked a few selfies for the sake of blending in with the crowd, and Elena snuck into every one of them.

"Rude," Caroline complained, but she was smiling. "It feels good though, doesn't it?"

"Doesn't what?"

"Actually living." Caroline inhaled deeply, taking in everything with her wide eyes. "We have to seize these moments, Elena. We've been living under a storm cloud and now we're finally experiencing a little bit of sun."

"We are technically still working here, Caroline."

"Details, details... It doesn't change the fact this is the most fun we've had in a while." Caroline's smile faded. "I wish Bonnie were here to see this too."

"We'll do a road trip next summer, and we'll make New Orleans our first stop," Elena was quick to reassure her.

"Really?"

"Absolutely. Once we're done with the vampires here, and the vampires back home, we'll go on a long, well deserved holiday and see the world. All three of us."

Caroline's smile returned, even brighter, and she started dancing again. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and soon Elena was joining in again, the whole of New Orleans it seemed abuzz with life and laughter. It was a sharp reminder of what Mystic Falls lacked, and what they'd missed out on since tragedy struck each of their lives, all in remarkably similar circumstances, if at different points in time.

Caroline was right. They couldn't forget to stop living even if their purpose here in town was with the technically not living. They had to soak up each glorious bit of sunshine while they could, and New Orleans was the perfect place for them to do just that.

...

..

.

"So, you got rid of them, just like that?" Kol was all smiles as he slouched across Rebekah's chaise de longue. "I'm impressed."

"They needed a villain to hunt. I gave them Marcel." Rebekah shrugged. "It buys you idiots some time to get an actual plan together because I assume you have more sense than to stay in town and attract attention."

"I'm here purely for the entertainment," Kol responded, with an innocent smile that fooled no one, least of all his sister who'd had centuries to get to grips with his ways.

"It's Mystic Falls, Kol, not New York. What entertainment could you possibly find here?"

"The witch for one. She's got a sharp tongue on her." Kol smirked. "And you do know how much I love pretty things with sharp tongues."

Rebekah rolled her eyes.

"She's a witch. You have spent your days chasing countless witches in the past. What makes this one so exciting? All I've gleaned from her is that she's as dull as dishwater. Hardly worth the bother if you ask me."

"She's a Bennett witch. The last time I spoke to one as fair as her was about in the 1500s. And by the end of our little affair, she was about ready to hex me." In response to Rebekah's raised eyebrows, he added, "It would never have worked between us anyway. She was far too stern for me. She hated my sense of humour."

"You'll find that a common fault with everyone who comes into contact with you, Kol. The only one who finds you funny is you," Rebekah pointed out.

Kol clutched his heart and pretended to look wounded.

"Ah, Rebekah. You hurt me. I thought we could at least start out this latest endeavour on the same side."

Rebekah threw him a disdainful look but proceeded not to answer.

There was a casual knock on the door before it was forced open anyway, a smirking Damon and his reluctant brother Stefan sauntering their way in as if they owned the bloody house. She would've chewed their heads off but she sensed it wasn't worth breaking a nail over. Besides, Stefan looked like hell, and she was dying to learn the reason behind it. After all, she was a girl first, vampire second which meant the need to learn gossip was strongly present in her veins.

"Well, Mystic Falls is as boring as I remember it," Damon announced, as if anyone gave a damn. "Luckily, the girls have become even stupider over the years, so barely any compulsion was needed to charm my way into their necks."

"Be careful, that's my entire gender you're offending there," Rebekah huffed, glaring at him.

"Easy, we're all on the same side here," Damon said, instantly defensive, although the smirk never left his face. He cast a worried glance over at his brother. "You okay there, Stef?"

Stefan gave a curt nod, but he was pale and haggard, as if all the years he'd been alive when he shouldn't have been had started to tear apart at his skin. He was still unbelievably attractive, with his chiselled jaw and his brooding eyes, but Rebekah had lost all interest in the Salvatores since her last encounter with them.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked, curious despite herself.

"He's on ripper detox," Damon answered for him, visibly exasperated, "...again."

"Why?" Kol interjected, baffled.

"Because I, unlike you lot, don't enjoy being a monster," Stefan got out. "I only came to say I think this whole endeavour of yours is suicidal, not to mention completely horrific."

"Life of the party this one," Damon mocked, rolling his eyes.

"Nik may be dangerous when he gets what he wants, Stefan, but he's even worse when he doesn't," Rebekah said rationally. "If he wants the doppelganger to exploit and kill, who are we to deny him that? It might actually shut him up to have his hybrid creations, plus with them around, he's less likely to focus on us."

Stefan didn't look at all happy by that explanation.

"You're still allowing him to murder someone for the sake of getting an army that will only likely cause problems for the rest of us," he said, looking as though he was refraining from physically attacking them all.

"Since when did you skip off Team Klaus, because I don't recall getting the memo?" Damon demanded, looking annoyed. "As you recall, he was your friend from the '20s, and you were the one who convinced me to trust him."

"Times change, and so do loyalties."

"Oh, God, Lexie got to you again, didn't she?" Damon looked to the heavens, despair and irritation in his eyes.

"She's trying to help me, Damon, which is more than what you're doing right now," Stefan snapped. "Give me one good reason why we are helping Klaus."

"Oh, I don't know, so that we can avoid pissing off an Original vampire. You are aware he has the power to end all our lives, don't you, or didn't you read the book of vampire bedtime stories I gave you?"

"Your sarcasm is unappreciated right now."

Damon resisted the urge to punch his brother in the face.

Rebekah rolled her eyes.

"If you two are not going to help, then leave," she demanded. "This is strictly family business anyway."

"Besides, what are the Salvatores going to achieve that we, the Mikaelsons, cannot?" Kol asked airily, looking from Damon to Stefan with open contempt.

"Well, for starters, at least our family doesn't border on incest. Secondly, when we have disagreements, we sort it out there and then, rather than literally stabbing each other in the back over and over. I'm surprised you've not found a way to make it a sport, actually," Damon taunted, his eyes flashing with a cruel kind of glee.

Kol immediately scowled and clenched his fists. To keep the peace, Rebekah ushered Stefan and Damon out, stopping them before they left.

"If we can't count on your help - and lord knows I was hoping for minimal involvement from you two anyway - can I least trust that you can keep your mouths shut?" she asked.

"This isn't right," Stefan insisted, but he wasn't openly saying he would go up against her if he had to. She sensed hesitation, and loyalty to his brother, which would hopefully sway him one way or the other.

"I know being back on the wagon requires you to stick to an almost painfully moral stance, Stefan, but believe me getting in the way of my brother's plans will only end badly for you both. He's been awaiting the arrival of a doppelganger for centuries and he will crush anyone stupid enough to stand in his way. I know you and my brother were once friends. If you've turned your back on him, at least be wise enough not to allow him to know that and keep away from us. Not just for your sake, but his. If there's one thing my brother cannot abide, it's disloyalty. God knows what he'll do to you if he should learn you've forsaken him."

Stefan locked eyes with her. "You know this isn't right, Rebekah. Even for Klaus, this whole plan is cruel."

"You're becoming increasingly sadder to listen to with every sentence you say," Damon complained, dragging his brother away. "Let's get you to a bar... or to a woman. See which one perks you up first."

Rebekah watched them leave, feeling oddly perturbed by Stefan's words. It wasn't like she hadn't killed people before. She'd left dozens of bodies in her wake once upon a time, and a dozen cities in flames, and her conscience had never stirred then. Somehow, when you were a vampire, death looked less hideous, mainly because you knew you would never get to experience it again. You could take lives easily, knowing your own would go on, outliving everything and everyone.

Stefan was right in one thing though.

This plan of Klaus's was cruel, and it seemed to feed a vendetta long since cooked up from the very moment he'd learned of a way to undo his nature. Very few people knew of Klaus's true intentions, only that for centuries he'd been looking for a doppelganger to break a curse. Werewolves and vampires alike had sought this mystical doppelganger out in order to win Klaus on their side. Her brother could be a horrifying enemy, but he also had the potential to be an important and powerful ally...on the rare chance your goals and his aligned that is.

She wasn't too fussed about the idea of sacrificing Elena. The girl was stubborn, and was often reckless, and had a ridiculous obsession with wearing cardigans, but all the same there was something fundamentally wrong with not feeling wrong about betraying her. It gnawed at her, and she could almost feel her human self yelling at her not to be so heartless and callous, but when you'd been that way for a thousand years, when you'd given your heart time and time again only to end up heartbroken and infuriated thus provoking you into deciding not to care ever again, how did you make yourself change? Did wanting to change signal she was not beyond hope?

She would have to go through with her brother's insane wishes, if not because she loved him and wanted him to be happy - even if he didn't deserve it - but because he held the key to her one true desire in his hand, and she was only weeks away from possessing it.

Her freedom.

...

..

.

The lights were dizzying, but Elena and Caroline kept pace with the crowd. The mood was easy to match and fake accordingly; a little drunkenness, mostly a sense of excitement, of rebellion, as if this city was a wayward child doing whatever the hell it pleased even under the rest of the world's judgemental gaze.

They chatted with a few people, swapped numbers - always giving out fakes of course - and enjoyed the city life. They drank in the culture, whilst at the same time scouting out for potential vampires, and unfortunately that was never easy. Most vampires you could scout out easily by the fact they never emerged in the daylight. Like the myth, they rejected the sunlight as it burned their skin, burned them to ashes, and so usually a tantalising seduction line such as ooh, the sun is out, let's go and enjoy it together separated the men from the monsters. Sometimes they got their facts wrong, and had to ward off pissed off men who grew angry at their teasing and would either skulk off, their pride visibly wounded, or they would go on the offensive, which was something they could handle with ease. Many a man's groin had been viciously booted in the name of defending their bodies, and they had perfected the move so that every single time they got the kick in the right place where it would send them down, near enough in tears.

But monsters - like every other natural creature - evolve, and some had grown exceptionally crafty, sporting daylight rings so that vampire hunters ignored them whenever they passed by. Slowly, the three girls had learned to recognise those too; namely by the tacky rings they sported. One could only assume that whoever they'd got the supply of rings from must've had a bit of fun at their expense, electing to choose the most unsubtle, gaudiest looking rings so as to provoke the most ridicule. Elena, Bonnie and Caroline usually broke down the newer vampires by asking for the story behind the rings, and they would usually spout some garble about it being a family ring and they wore it for sentimental reasons, forgetting the fundamental truth that men just didn't wear jewellery unless it was a wedding band or an ironic fashion choice used to make a statement.

"This is great," Caroline cheered, looping an arm around Elena's neck.

Elena, though anxious to enjoy herself, couldn't agree. The night had been - so far - fun, and that was what disturbed her. There was nothing to depict anything out of the ordinary. Everybody could've been a vampire. In the throes of the night, anyone was dangerous. A few faces had caught her attention due to the fact they seemed unusually fixated on her and Caroline, but a moment later they'd draped themselves around other pretty women and had gone sauntering off.

The vampires here - if there were any - were excellent at disguising themselves.

Elena couldn't help but wonder if there was a reason Rebekah had wanted them out of Mystic Falls, particularly since as far as she could tell there were no vampires here. Usually, the vampires in any given town or city gave themselves a way, either by being too overfriendly with the women they befriended, or by luring people away down dark alleyways and street corners with promises of a good time.

In the end, fed up with reconnaissance work, she elected to go down the route Caroline seemed to be going down, which was just to say fuck it and go all out in order to have a good time.

They ended up in a small bar, chatting to some locals, and Elena could slowly feel herself slipping away into the land of inebriation. She missed the fact Bonnie wasn't with them, and managed to slip her name into every other sentence she uttered at Caroline, but despite everything they'd all endured, it felt so nice to just disappear into this new world and not worry for one moment about the darkness that lived around the corners of it.

She would later kick herself for it, but at some point she agreed to follow this particularly handsome man outside for some fresh air. Her logic at the time was that she needed some herself, and Caroline seemed to be having a good time chatting up the bartender and getting a hell of a lot of free drinks in the process. She allowed the man - whose name she recalled as being something exotic, like Rio or Raphael - to pull her outside, and she laughed all the way as he kept tugging her just out of sight.

The fresh air did do one trick however: it started to sober her up. Not enough for instant results, but enough to pinch her instincts into life, and they started screaming at her that she was falling into a trap she'd looked out for a million times before.

"You don't look so hot," her new friend said, and was she imagining that he'd suddenly split into two people or was that just the double vision kicking in?

"I swear I didn't have that much," she mumbled, trying to calculate in her head how much she'd had to drink.

She never really allowed herself to get that drunk often, only because it dulled her senses and she'd never really liked the person she became when she was drunk. Drunk Elena tended to be promiscuous and overly friendly, and that did not usual equal good decisions.

"That last one did you in, huh?"

There was something menacing about that sentence, even though out of anyone else's lips it would've sounded innocent, playful even, and then Elena cottoned on to the truth and she could've strangled herself.

"You put something in my drink," she slurred. "Why?"

That question may have seemed pointless, as there was usually only one motive for men to drug women, but Elena had learned in her short time of being a vampire hunter that even vampires could resort to human methods of controlling their victims for darker purposes, especially if they knew - or suspected - their victims were wearing vervain.

"Marcel's orders," came the cold reply, and she was out like a light after that.

When she awoke, she was tied to a chair, surrounded by darkness. Her wrists were bound tightly, as were her ankles, and for the first time in a long time she felt incredibly stupid. Never let your guard down, that was the one rule she'd made for herself a long time ago; never let it down because the moment it is, that will be when the storm hits.

The room she was in was devoid of anything except a single window which was heavily barred and boarded up. The walls were all made of stone, creating a feeling of chilliness that clung to her bare arms and legs, and she couldn't help but shiver as a result. Her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, and she made out a few other things, like the fact there was one other chair facing her, and another figure was slumped across it, her blonde hair running across her face.

Her heart sunk as she realised who it was.

Caroline.

Elena began to wrestle fiercely with the knots but they were tight. This sadly wasn't the first time she'd been tied up like this, but these knots were triple bound to avoid escape, which made her suspect that her captors weren't unfamiliar with their work.

"I apologise for the accommodation here, but we usually only offer hospitality to those who aren't vampire hunters," came a smooth, cold voice.

She blinked, momentarily surprised as a tall, dark skinned man slunk out of the shadows. He was ridiculously attractive, perhaps in his late twenties, and if you'd had to pick him out of a line up, you would never have guessed he was capable of such darkness. He wore a casual shirt, which clung tightly to his skin, outlining his muscles, and dark jeans, and it was that casual image which made the reality of what he was that much more frightening.

"I don't know what you mean," she managed to get out.

Nothing about their act should've given them away, but clearly something had, and Elena was racking her brain to figure out what it was. Were they too eager, too desperate to fit in that they'd stood out? Was this city under such a tight control that the vampires could smell new victims out a mile away?

Her captor's next sentence immediately gave her the answer she required.

"I've had this city under my control for decades now, do you really think I can't sniff out a vampire hunter or two?" He leaned forward, as if studying her, and she could almost sense his curiosity at her choice in profession. It didn't stem from a place of sexism; he just simply looked as if he couldn't work out what made two girls like themselves putting murder on their resume. "I have guys patrolling the city every night, reporting back to me the moment anyone knew comes into town. We do a little digging on the newbies, and if they check out, we let 'em through. New Orleans always welcomes new blood." He grinned at his own joke. "Pun definitely intended."

"Vampire hunters? What are you, some kind of freak?" Elena was sticking to her guns in the slimmest of hopes that he might just buy the act she was selling. "There are no such things as vampires! Me and my friend were just looking for a good time." Then, for good measure, she wriggled furiously whilst trying to display both a frightened and angry demeanour, which wasn't easy to pull off. "Now let us go before I scream bloody murder and get the police on your ass!"

He wasn't buying it, and suddenly she found herself in uncharted waters, and that terrified her. All her vampire-hunting career, she'd pulled off a lot of things: daring escapes, swift executions, rescues that had bordered on suicidal adventures; yet now, she'd landed in her enemy's hands, and they weren't buying the charm she could usually spoon feed out, and she had no idea what had given her away - what had given them away - and that left her feeling nervous.

She wasn't afraid to die, but she sure as hell wasn't going to do it with her hands tied around her back.

"Sweetheart, I know a lot about you, starting with your name... Elena Gilbert."

Elena stiffened.

Now this was a new one: a vampire knowing her name. She'd never given it out before - none of them had - to avoid their enemies tracking them down. She'd been Mary-Jane, Elyse, Isobel, and even Roxanne, but never Elena. Not on a mission anyway. It was too easy a name to trace back, even if it wasn't exactly uncommon.

"How do you know my name?" she demanded, determined not to show any fear although it was beginning to trickle through her veins all the same.

"Doesn't matter. Just so we're on first name terms, I'm Marcel." Her captor smiled, and it was almost disarming, that smile, although she was sure it was meant purely as a means of baiting her before he revealed her fate. "I run this city, as I've already told you, and my people are a little...disconcerted, shall we say, about the presence of vampire hunters running amok in our town. You made an effort to blend in, I'll give you that, but my men found your abandoned vehicle on the edge of town, and they found the compartments stocked full of weapons, and once we'd traced it back to yourself thanks to one of my keen eyed men, we knew what you were and why you were here. I think that just about answers all the questions I'm sure you were dying to ask, so we can skip ahead to the next subject: your fate."

Caroline, even throughout this speech, had remained alarmingly still, but Elena wasn't going to allow concern for her friend to filter through her impassive expression, which at the moment was dangerously close to faltering. If you gave your enemy even one flicker of a sign that you were emotionally invested in something, or someone, other than yourself, you handed them an advantage. Maybe sometimes she came across as a stoic bitch, but guarding your emotions at the critical moment allowed you to release them when you had the upper hand so, really, it paid to be emotionless sometimes.

"If you're going to kill me, I suggest skipping the monologue and just doing it," she said coldly. "Although, really, it's not a fair fight. You should untie me and at least give me my hands to use. Sometimes they work even better than weapons."

Marcel laughed. "Oh, I like you. If only all our enemies were this easy to catch and this interesting to talk to." He knelt so he was eye level with her. "I can't have you running around my city, but I'm a fair man. I can give you a chance to leave here with your life intact, as long as you promise never to return." His smile dropped. "Or alternatively I can hand you over to my men and look the other way and whatever happens, happens. The choice is yours."

It was Elena's turn to laugh.

"I've noticed over the years that when any vampire gives you a choice - run or die - it's never a choice at all. You don't know what I'm capable of, so maybe I should take my chances on your men," she said, cocking an eyebrow as if presenting him a challenge that he had to respond to.

"Without your weapons, you'll be torn to shreds in seconds. I might rule with an iron fist, but I don't like taking lives unless it serves a purpose, especially human ones since we rely on your kind to live. I suggest you take my offer and leave and never return."

"What if I've booked a holiday here?" Elena pouted. "I don't have traveller's insurance, and it'll be a nightmare to cancel without good reason..."

Marcel gritted his teeth, showing signs of annoyance for the first time since he'd walked in.

"Is this how you get your victims? Riling them up until you piss them off enough to attack before you slaughter them?" he questioned.

"You call it slaughter; I call it protecting humanity from monsters," Elena returned coolly.

"You actively seek vampires out to kill them. That's called murder in my book."

"Call it whatever you like, I'm still looking out for my people."

"And what started you off on this little quest, hm? See, the way I look at it, there are various reasons why someone becomes a killer, whether it's for profit of some kind, or to get someone's attention, or because they're so insanely in love with someone they'll do just about anything to be with them, but the top reason for murder? Revenge. And I'd bet my entire city that you didn't just stumble into the world of vampires by happenstance, did you?"

Elena didn't flinch.

"I'm going to take my time killing you," she promised, venom soaking her voice. "But first, a little demonstration is required to prove just how easy it is to underestimate someone."

She immediately sprung free from the chair, having spent the entire duration of her conversation with Marcel working her slim hands out of the bonds which had very badly been trussed together, and at this moment, Caroline, who'd spent her time not so much unconscious but biding her time until she could spring into action, mirrored her actions, and the two of them, taking Marcel by complete surprise, lashed out in frightening unison. Elena, who was more prone to using her fists, punched him squarely in the face, forcing him to reel back in shock, whereas Caroline, the kicker, used her legs to aim a well placed kick between his legs with her heels, a feat that caused two levels of pain to go shooting through Marcel.

He crumpled, and the girls took their chance to run, unfortunately ill equipped to permanently dispose of him.

"You took your time waking up!" Elena hollered back at Caroline.

"Sorry. You're just so much better at talking down evil villains to the point where they drop their guard."

"Evil villains..." Elena snorted at the choice of phrase as they linked hands so they could increase their speed simultaneously. "Is there any other kind?"

Caroline gave a non-committal grunt and pulled her down a side passageway, the two of them freezing as Marcel came blurring past, stopping right beside them as he growled with undisguised annoyance, the darkness their only disguise. They held their breaths as he waited a breath longer before he ran on, cursing angrily.

Foolishly, he seemed to have left the building he'd kept them in unguarded, so they resumed running, surprisingly unopposed, spinning out into the still partying streets of New Orleans where they threw themselves into the crowd, hoping to blend in.

"What now?" Caroline hissed. "We have no way to get back. If they found our weapons, they found our car, which means that's long gone."

"We knew it was a risk going in, same as we always do," Elena pointed out. "We'll hijack another one and go back to Mystic Falls and call Bonnie back."

"Why? We know what we're up against. We just need weapons..."

"No. We need an army." Elena still felt a little shaken; that much hadn't been faked. "Marcel has control over an entire city, which stands to reason that he has more than just a handful of vampires guarding the streets. I'm sure Rebekah didn't do that much research otherwise she would've warned us."

Caroline shot Elena a look that clearly showed her doubt over Rebekah's researching skills, but she didn't argue.

Smart vampires Elena could handle.

Smart vampires who could control entire cities and who knew her name was another story entirely, but Elena knew they would have to up their game if they wanted to defeat this particular enemy.

And all the while there was this nagging feeling in the back of her mind that there was a piece of the puzzle she was missing, some vital clue that could've given her back the edge she'd lost, some mystery person who lay in the shadows who knew her background and had tipped Marcel off, because she highly doubted it was just a lackey. It had to have been someone who knew what to look for.

Her first thought was her parents' killer, the blue eyed demon with the unfairly handsome demeanour, but she knew if he'd wanted her dead she'd be dead.

Maybe she was over thinking this, paranoid that someone somewhere had a bigger conspiracy against her and her friends, but Elena had learned over the years it was better to over think and cover all possible scenarios, than to underestimate and lose everything because of you'd gambled everything over a hunch. Elena had lost so much already, she couldn't bear thinking about losing anyone else, and she'd decided long ago if she couldn't fix her own pain, she'd help prevent this type of horror from affecting anybody else.

Was it an impossible goal? Probably.

Did it make her any less determined to carry it out? Absolutely not.

.

..

...

"Well, that went stunningly to plan."

Rebekah whirled around on her brother, who was sprawled lazily across one of her chairs, wearing a wicked grin, his eyebrows about level with his hair.

"Helpful, Kol, really helpful," she sarcastically responded.

"You could've picked a better way of distracting your friends without involving Marcel," Kol remarked casually. "You know his biggest flaw is his ego, and with it standing in the way he never sees a surprise attack coming...even from humans."

Rebekah rubbed her temple vigorously, restraining herself from physically attacking her tactless brother. She knew involving Marcel in her plans was a risk. It had been a long shot approaching him in the first place, particularly since for a long time her family had believed him dead, and vice versa. He was a survivor though, first and foremost, and still slightly smitten by her, as within only moments of reuniting with him he'd agreed to help her however he could in exchange for only one thing.

A promise to ensure Klaus never got his hands on New Orleans again.

Marcel had built quite an empire for himself, and had even found a way to reign the witches in so that he kept them under his control, and he was always slightly paranoid that someone much more powerful would come and snatch it all away. Now why did that sound familiar? Rebekah, even though she knew her brother might eventually look in the direction of New Orleans in the future as a means of extending his power, gave her word she would try and assuage any of Klaus' efforts in doing so, although they both knew once Klaus had his heart set on something, you'd have to conjure a succession of miracles to persuade him to drop it in favour of something else.

"How did he let two measly humans overpower him?" she asked rhetorically, fuming at Marcel's incompetence.

"Easy - you trained them, and he's an idiot," Kol supplied.

"I suppose, but he has an entire army of idiotic vampires at his command and he found the need to leave them unguarded just because they were humans? I can't decide whether to be impressed that Elena and Caroline overpowered him, or infuriated at Marcel for underestimating humans. I'm sure it's a sexism thing as well..."

"In Marcel's defence, Rebekah, if he was sexist at any point in his miserable life, I'm sure he changed his tune the moment he met you, and if he hadn't, you would've beaten it out of him anyway," Kol pointed out.

Rebekah had to smile at that.

Despite their differences, Kol always seemed to grasp her in a way none of her other brothers had. Klaus might profess to know her, and Elijah certainly seemed to feel he had her best interests at heart, and Finn... well, Finn liked to believe he knew what was best for her, as only older siblings do, but only Kol actually understood her. For being startlingly immature for a thousand year old vampire, he had a very modern understanding of women, although that didn't stop him from dropping the occasional revolting comment by way of flirtation. Deep down, she suspected he only made misogynistic comments to see which women he could get the sharpest response from. As he liked to say so often it bored her, he preferred women with sharp tongues. She secretly hoped he one day found a companion who could not only match his wit, but also shoot him down with their own from time to time.

"So, what now?" Kol asked, pouring himself a drink, making himself at home.

"Now they'll come crawling back here, if they have any sense, to regroup," Rebekah sighed, running a hand through her thick blonde locks. "I'm sure I'll get an earful about how I haven't done my research properly. Luckily, I have a backup plan."

She retrieved a dozen or so files from a cabinet in the room and tossed them onto the coffee table in front of Kol, who perused them lazily before putting them back.

"And these are...?"

"Case files of other, smaller locations where vampires can be found and, more importantly, killed. None of these will be hard to kill; they'll not even chip so much as a fingernail, that's how easy to kill they are. There are a number of unpleasant exes of mine who happen to be in amongst them as well. This'll keep them occupied, if nothing else, and as a bonus it'll also rid my life of unwanted cretin I cannot believe I had the misfortune to date."

"You always did know how to pick 'em," Kol remarked, picking his teeth absent-mindedly. "Remember Caleb?"

"Which one?" Rebekah snorted.

"The Caleb who just about broke my spine in two because he believed we were dating," Kol responded, smirking at the memory.

"It was amusing that you actually let him believe he could take you before you compelled him to go take a long walk and think about his life decisions."

Rebekah recalled her long list of dating choices and realised she'd dated some truly horrendous people. Mostly men, if she was honest, but a couple of times she'd been entranced by a few women, a couple of whom had gone on to make history. No one would've believed her if she'd revealed who'd been on her dating list; it would've completely rewritten the history books, not to mention caused scandal in the education system to believe that anything other than heterosexuality had existed up until the twenty first century.

"I think I'm going to go take another look at Mystic Falls," Kol announced, cutting into her thoughts. "Maybe it'll suddenly become more interesting." He gave Rebekah a parting smirk. "Hope you have fun with your girlfriends."

He disappeared before she could say another word, although a scathing response had already formed on the tip of her tongue.

Not that she would've responded anyway; she was too lost in her own thoughts. Thoughts that revolved around concealing a begrudging admiration to a certain brunette... and yes, even a certain blonde as well.

Not that she'd ever admit that of course.

Better to die with a lie on your lips, then to acknowledge a painful truth and watch it burn your world down.


End file.
